Cobook is "the smart address book" -- it sits in your dock, awoken by a keyboard shortcut, ready to serch your contacts, and display not only the information you've stored about them, but also their social profiles, etc. It also makes it dead simple to create, update, tag, email, tweet, yada, yada.
Alfred is the best thing since OSX for the Mac. Among a-million other things it allows you to search and view your contacts.
Until a few days ago, when Cobook released Google Contacts support, I used the standard Synchronize with Google feature in Address Book. It worked OK, but I think there are some discrepancies in how individual fields are synced (e.g. Work Phone becomes Other). I figured Cobook could do a better job so decided to give them a shot.
This assumes you're already syncing with Google Contacts through the standard Synchronize with Google feature in Address Book.
- Open Address Book Preferences, click Accounts, Uncheck
Synchronize with Google. - Open your Address Book contacts, select all (Cmd-A), delete. Don't worry, your contacts are safe in Google, but you can backup first if you're worried about it.
- Open Cobook Preferences, click Address Book, and click the
Connectbutton (if you're not already contected). **You can skip this step if you don't care about Alfred working and/or you only want contacts in your Cobook / Google Contacts. - Within Cobook Preferences click Services and connect your Google Contacts account.
Over the next minute or two your Cobook and Address Book contacts list with sync with Google. The little checkmark / pie chart icon in the bottom left of the main Cobook window shows the status of the sync.
After completing the above you'll be able to:
- Search, create, and edit contacts in Cobook or Address Book
- Use Alfred's Address Book Features.
- Automatically sync all changes on your Mac (via Cobook or Address Book) to Google Contacts (and vice versa).
Please feel free to edit and redistribute as you see fit.