You thought it couldn’t be done, but you can indeed login to iCloud on both a Windows PC and even an Android smartphone.
Yes iCloud was designed to work for Apple products such as the Macbook Pro, and a variety of handheld devices including the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. People have been accessing iCloud from Android devices with just a few tricks up their sleeves since Apple launched iCloud to the public (way back in 2011).
Here’s what you need to do.
How to Use iCloud on Android
Sadly there isn’t an iCloud app for Android, as that would be the easiest way to get it set up. However, it’s actually not that difficult, and the good news is that if you own another Apple device, you’ll get 5GB of free storage for iCloud. If not, don’t worry, you can access their storage plans (for a price).
This article presumes you already have an iCloud account, and that your phone supports CalDAV and CardDav protocols. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Find out the iCloud server hosting your account
- Go to Calendar
- Click on the sharing icons
- Choose ‘Public Calendar’
- This should bring up a URL i.e webcal://pXX-calendarws.icloud.com
- pXX is the server number – it could be P01, P22, etc, take a note of it
2. Set up Email
- Using your Android phone, go to your email client
- Create a new IMAP account
- Input your email address, but use your Apple ID as the username and your iCloud password as the password
- Enter the server number from step 1 where you see the server URL (pXX-imap.mail.me.com)
3. Sync Contacts
- Go to your contacts settings
- Enter pXX-contacts.icloud.com as the contacts server
- Choose ‘Use SSL’
- Enter your iCloud username as the username and your iCloud password as the password
4. Sync Calendars
- Go to your calendar settings in the calendar app
- Enter pXX-caldav.icloud.com as the calendar server
- Choose ‘Use SSL’
- Enter your iCloud username as the username and your iCloud password as the password, as in step 3.