Apple requires all third-party apps that sync with iCloud (like BusyCal and BusyContacts) to use app-specific passwords - your standard iCloud password will not work. An app-specific password is essentially a 16 to 19 characters long, custom password generated by Apple that is different than your standard iCloud password. Only Apple's apps (Mail, Calendar and Contacts) can use your standard iCloud password. All other apps must use an app-specific password to connect with your iCloud account.

You may set BusyCal and BusyContacts as the default apps as follows:

BusyContacts pulls in the LinkedIn contacts from Apple Contacts. Check Apple Contacts to make sure your LinkedIn contacts appear there by clicking on the All LinkedIn group in the left sidebar. If they appear in Apple Contacts, they should appear in BusyContacts.

To uninstall BusyContacts, launch BusyContacts while holding down the option key to display the Startup Options dialog, then select Reset BusyContacts and click Continue. Resetting BusyContacts will delete the BusyContacts database, and quit. All of your contacts will be preserved on iCloud, Exchange and/or Google. You may then drag the BusyContacts app to the Trash.

BusyContacts 1.x does not support Exchange GAL.

If you are syncing with multiple services, you are likely to have duplicate cards for many of your contacts.

BusyContacts displays mail messages in the Activity List sent to/from the selected contact. Currently, only messages from Apple Mail or MailMate are supported.

You can change the color of contacts in BusyContacts using Address Book colors or Tag colors.

macOS Calendar, Reminders, and BusyCal can each display alarms for your Events and To Dos. You should disable the alerts for macOS Calendar and Reminders to prevent receiving two alarms for every event — one displayed by macOS Calendar or Reminders and another displayed by BusyCal.

BusyContacts currently only prints labels and envelopes.

Tags in BusyContacts do not sync with Groups in Google Contacts. BusyContacts Tags only sync with iCloud and Exchange.

BusyCal or BusyContacts is unable to sync with your Yahoo account because it now requires that third-party apps use an app-specific password to sync with your Yahoo account. Your standard Yahoo password will not work.

BusyCal or BusyContacts can be installed on up to 5 computers that you own, using the same registration code.

Certain features, such as creating a To Do from BusyContacts, requires the presence of BusyCal

Bulk editing is a challenging thing to implement. Currently BusyContacts has limited bulk editing abilities (only bulk copy / move / delete are supported).

BusyCal 3 defaults event titles to Black with a colored dot, reflecting the calendar's color. This can be changed under Settings > Appearance. Set the Events Text color to be displayed with their Calendar / Tag colors.

Unfortunately, Google does not sync the Birthday field with 3rd party apps, and so this won't sync back to BusyContacts.

This is due to incorrect permissions set when setting up sharing in Exchange

Office 365 connections normally fail due to one of two things.

From the View > Appearance menu

iCloud aliases (i.e. alternate email addresses to your real account) won't work. Similarly, you cannot connect to an iCloud account via 3rd party apps, such as BusyCal, using an alias. Please use the real iCloud account ID

When you launch Reminders the first time on iOS 13 or macOS 10.15, it asks you if you'd like to "Upgrade" your reminders. If you choose "Yes", then these calendars will no longer sync over CalDAV and thus will not work with third party apps.

macOS Catalina 10.15+ no longer provides email access to 3rd party apps.

No it does not, BusyCal and BusyContacts already use OAuth 2.0 to access your Google / G Suite accounts. We don't use or store your Google account passwords.

You need to enable Indexed for Messages under MailMate Settings

Recent updates to macOS have broken WAN sync which uses a legacy communication protocol.

Here you will find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the different licensing options we offer for BusyCal & BusyContacts on macOS. If you don't find your question answered below, feel free to contact us.

In order to enable Mail Activity within BusyContacts, you need to install the BusyContacts Mail Plugin and enable it under Apple Mail. The Manage Plugins button may not appear for some users.

This appears to be due to a bug in how migration is handled by macOS.

Microsoft has deprecated Basic Authentication (login / password) and has turned it off for most clients, switching to MFA instead (Multi-factor authentication).

There can be a variety of reasons why you may be unable to connect to your Google Calendar / Contacts account.

Recent updates of BusyContacts and BusyCal (v2024.3.x) are crashing for macOS 10.15 users.