Download Spanning Sync

Spanning Sync 3.3 for Mac OS X, including the installer, the uninstaller and a 15-day trial of the complete product.

Availability: Spanning Sync is no longer sold or supported. The sync service was switched off on June 19, 2013. This site keeps the product's documentation, release history and support notes online for reference. The installation and removal guides below are kept for people who still have Spanning Sync on an older Mac.

Spanning Sync 3.3 for Mac

Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later · Universal binary · 2.3 MB · English

Download no longer available Final release, July 2012. See the release notes.

About the free trial

The trial ran for 15 days and was the full product: every feature enabled, no credit card required. Buying a license afterwards unlocked the copy you already had, so there was never a second download or a reinstall.

Licenses were sold for $25 per year or $65 as a one-time purchase. Pricing details →

Requirements at a glance

Mac OS X	10.5.8 or later (version 1.0 supported 10.4.8)
Processor	Intel or PowerPC
Google account	Gmail or Google Apps
Connection	Internet access for each sync

Installing Spanning Sync

Open the downloaded disk image and double-click SpanningSync.prefPane. Mac OS X asks whether to install it for this user only or for all users on the Mac.
System Preferences opens the new Spanning Sync pane automatically.
Enter your Google account name and password, then click Sign In.
On the Calendars tab, tick each iCal calendar you want to sync and choose the Google Calendar it should pair with. Do the same for Address Book groups on the Contacts tab.
Turn syncing on. The first sync compares both sides and merges them; later syncs only move changes and are much quicker.

First sync taking a while? That is normal with a large calendar history or thousands of contacts. Leave the Mac awake until the menu-bar icon reports that the sync finished.

Removing Spanning Sync

The download includes an Uninstall Spanning Sync tool. Running it removes the preference pane, the menu-bar item and the background sync components, and it unregisters Spanning Sync from Mac OS X Sync Services so that iCal and Address Book no longer wait for it. Your calendars and contacts are left exactly as they are, on your Mac and in Google.

Dragging the preference pane to the Trash is not enough on its own: the background components stay registered and can keep a sync session open. If you no longer have the uninstaller, open System Preferences, right-click the Spanning Sync icon and choose Remove, then restart your Mac.

Version history

Version	Date	What changed
3.3	July 2012	Final maintenance release.
3.0 – 3.2	2010 – 2011	Spanning Sync 3: Address Book groups synced with Google contact groups, finer control over what syncs, and a new engine up to 10× faster.
2.0	September 2008	Address Book and contact-photo sync with Google Contacts, sync-on-change instead of timed intervals, faster networking, better support for large calendars and contact lists, improved multi-Mac and MobileMe compatibility.
1.2.1	2008	Calendar-sync refinements to the original iCal ↔ Google Calendar product.
1.0	March 2007	First release: two-way iCal and Google Calendar sync, 15-day trial, Universal binary, Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later.
Beta	November 2006	Limited private beta.

Full release notes →