Open Bug 1739579 Opened 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Consider dropping the read-only OSX address book

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, task)

Unspecified
macOS

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: mkmelin, Unassigned)

References

Details

Consider dropping the read-only OSX address book, and switch users over to using their read-write iCloud calendar through CardDAV.

Apparently what we have is not working with 10.11 and up anyway.
For end users, that it's read-only is really quite problematic, even if the data access does have some perks.

There's a big note at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/addressbook

Important
Do not use the AddressBook framework in macOS 10.11 and later. Use the APIs defined in the Contacts framework instead.

Its always been a detriment to TB that it didn't work with the Address book well - but at least it could read the addresses. Since 10.11 its stopped working at all, bug#1720257 and the only reason I've not switched over to Apple's (lousy) mail program is that I'd hoped it would get fixed. Cutting and pasting every new email address I want to use is a total pain !

Working through iCloud - especially if it was read/write would probably be a much better solution.

The challenge may be getting it set up, I got the very very nasty hack working that makes Lightning and iCloud talk to each other (the setup should be integrated into Lightning as mere mortals will never get it to work - even following the online instructions, but most likely it won't be). Figuring out how to get the security keys was the challenge, the instructions were very slightly out of date, but you had to do it exactly correctly or it wouldn't work. https://frightanic.com/apple-mac/thunderbird-icloud-calendar-sync/ was the only set of instructions that came close to working , in case there is a parallel for Address books.

TbSync with DAV-4-TbSync can access iCloud, so we could take a look at that.

It looks like Tbsync isn't maintained - it says it only works with 91.0a1 - 91.*

91 is the latest (official) release

See Also: → 1662759
OS: Unspecified → macOS
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