Quick tip: Calendar color fix for iPhone and iPod touch
One of the many new features introduced in the iPhone 2.0 update is the ability for the iPhone’s calendar app to recognize multiple calendars you have in iCal or Google calendar. If you sync your calendar to your iPhone through USB, you may notice a bug where the colors displayed in the iPhone calendar don’t match up with the colors in iCal. Although this appears to be a bug that Apple will have to fix, there are a few homemade workaround solutions you can try if you’re as meticulous about your colors matching as we are.
Solution 1, syncing through MobileMe
Although syncing through USB doesn’t match the colors, push synchronization through MobileMe does. If you already have a MobileMe account, all you need to do is make sure iCal syncs with your me.com account, and then you simply create your MobileMe account on your iPhone and set it to sync with your me.com calendar. Make sure your iCal syncs with me.com first, or you may lose the calendar data on your iPhone.
Another problem arises with this solution however, where subscribed calendars on iCal do not appear on me.com. Until Apple finds a solution for this, the only current workaround is to export your subscribed calendar in iCal and then reimport it as a new calendar. This will create it as new calendar and will properly sync with MobileMe, and to stop duplicate calendars from showing on iCal you can simply check one of them off to stop displaying it. The only problem with this is if you use subscribed calendars that others will change often, in which case you’ll have to do this each time you want to update the calendar on MobileMe and on your iPhone.
If you do not have a MobileMe account, 60 day free trials are available at me.com.
Solution 2, “choose” your iPhone calendar colors
Calendar on the iPhone will assign colors in a certain order for your first five calendars: red, orange, blue, green, and purple. Afterward, any more calendars are assigned a random color out of those five. To manipulate this, use iTunes to sync only selected calendars in the “Info” tab. First sync the one that you want to be red, then sync again including your second calendar that you want to be orange, and so forth. You can create extra calendars to use to “skip” a color if you wish, then delete later at your leisure.
There are a couple minor solutions you can try as well, in iTunes if you go to the “Info” tab and choose to replace your calendar info in the “Advanced” section, colors will be randomly reassigned to your calendars on your iPhone. You can keep doing this until you get lucky, or are satisfied with the colors for each calendar. One last thing you can do is simply change the colors of your calendars in iCal to match with the colors on your iPhone, although if you have been using iCal for a while and the colors are hard-coded into your brain, then this is probably not a particularly viable solution. Know of a fix not mentioned here? Be sure to let us know!
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Great tips.
Sadly the second option didn’t work for me, but I managed to sync the colours using mobile me and then deactivate everything.
The colours still work - no need to reprogramme my brain now!
Second option worked for me! Thanks!
I noticed another calendar issue with the iPhone. There seems to be no way to reassign an event to a different calendar. So I went to iCal and reassigned it there, but the change does not seem to propagate back to the iPhone.
I have mobile me, but your solution 1 does not work. I still get wacky colors for the calendars on the iphone.
I’ve experienced this color-assignment issue, as well as another, more frustrating one, with the 2.0 update: Events that are scheduled properly in iCal show show up as occurring three hours *earlier* on my ipod touch, while events created in my ipod touch appear three hours *later* when syncing to iCal. Both my computer and my ipod are set to EST.
Thanks! Adding one by one in the correct order via iTunes using the advanced replacement section of the info tab fixed it for me!
Brilliant - solution 2 worked just as you said. Saved my sanity! Thanks.
#2 didn’t work for me. My jailbroken 2.0 seems to assign colors to the calendars based on their alphabetical order.
The second option did not work for me, but I kept trying. It took about 5 tries and I had to sync the calendars one by one in a different order than suggested, but eventually the colors matched up correctly! Keep trying and experiment a little and it should work!
option #2 worked perfectly for me…just sync’d them up one at a time using the color order you listed above. THANK YOU!!!! (big sigh of relief) the mis-matched color issue was driving me crazy. thankfully, all the iphone colors matched my google calendar colors…I had to change from pink to red on one calendar…but I think i’ll live.
Great tip- except that I already sync’d (sp?) all my calendars to my phone. Does anyone know how I get them off the phone, so that I can put them on again in the right order? Tried selecting in itunes only my red one, then orange, but they still come in mangled. =(
Thanks!
Jeff
Ok, I finally found a fix that worked for me! Link here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7776953
Go down quite a bit to a post by SwissMo. Basically worked, with some tweaks (pink never appeared on my iphone!)
Jeff
Beautiful. Option 2 worked for me.
There is a workaround for the problem with subscribed calendars not syncing with MobileMe, if you have BusySync. Set up a Google Calendar account and subscribe to the calendar on Google Calendars rather than iCal, and then use BusySync to sync the Google calendar with iCal, which will then sync on to the iPhone over MobileMe.
Here is the real way to do it (not for the faint of heart) - at least for firmware version 2.0.2 on a jailbroken phone.
The Calendar information is stored in an sqlite database. The db file is /var/mobile/Library/Calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb.
The “Calendar” table contains a row for each calendar, and includes the following fields (among others):
store_id, title, read_only, color_r, color_g, color_b.
The color_x fields store the colour in 8bit RGB format and the title stores the name of the calendar. So, to change the colour the “Holidays” calendar to white, you need to run the following query on the database:
UPDATE Calendar SET color_r=255, color_g=255, color_b=255 WHERE title=’Holidays’;
Of course, to do this, you will need to open the database. The easiest way to do that is by using sqlite on a Linux machine. Just run “sqlite Calendar.sqlitedb” after transfering the database file to a Linux machine. If your like me, and have multiple sqlite versions installed, you might have to run “sqlite3 Calendar.sqlitedb” instead.
It is advisable to make a backup copy of the Calendar.sqlitedb file before playing with it
Unfortunately iTunes doesn’t like it when you mess with your Calendar settings and refuses to sync afterwards… Such is life.
So apparently iTunes doesn’t care if you mess with your calendars.
Just remember to change the ownership of the Calendar.sqlitedb file back to mobile if you copy the file back as root.
MobileMe does not retain the colors from iCal.
Solution #2 sort of works, but then if you try to sync with MobileMe by turning on syncing on the iPhone, you get the random colors again.
This seems like a small matter, but it’s actually really annoying! Apple, are you listening? Anyone else have a fix for this?
I was using a MobileMe trial but after getting fed up of nothing updating AT ALL even though everything was set up I just cancelled the trial, but everything’s gone back to the way it was. I would try the second method, only the problem is that with iCal, I’d changed the calenders to have custom colours rather than the automatically assigned ones, so there’s no point. Shall just hope Apple sort it in a future update.
I have had my iPhone 3G since it came out and I’m very happy with it. Then today, out of the blue (literally), my calendar changed to, you guessed it, blue. Hardly readable. How do I change it back to red? And why did it do this?
Mine turned to blue today too - I have no idea why. And all the other calendars are yellow. WTF!!!
I reset all of my settings and it didn’t change the calendar colors back. This is so annoying - I can’t read the calendar at all.
I’m using Outlook to synch - not mobileme or ical.
Same problem here… calendar inexplicably changed to bright freakin’ yellow with white text. Completely unreadable. WTF is right!
Thanks for the help. I expect for Apple to get these thing right. For example the default colors for iCal are Blue, Green, Red, Orange, … But the iPhone list starts with Red, Orange….
Syncing the default color order on the two platforms would have made this need to create color place holder calendars just for the purpose of skipping a default color unneeded.
I hope Apple sees the need for a change.
Thanks for the help - can’t wait for WebIS to give us a *real* calendar via Pocket Informant! In the meantime, your tip#2 let me get colors so they’re workable and sync’d with iCal.
NOW…can I switch the sync option back to “all” calendars, or should I just leave the individual calendars selected?? I guess I’m worried that I’ll create a new calendar and forget to manually sync it!
Thanks again,
The Duck
tip#2 works great for me!!
THANKS