⚠️ This project is no longer maintained. For automated backup of Google contacts, I would recommend vdirsyncer. For one-time backups, Google Takeout works fine.

Overview

Gcardvault is a command-line utility which exports all of a user's Google Contacts in vCard/VCF format for backup (or portability).

Features:

• Automatically discovers all of a user's contacts
• Downloads them in vCard/VCF format and saves them to disk for archival
• Optionally manages version history for each contact in an on-disk "vault" (a git repo under the covers)
• Can be run via Docker image (multi-arch) or installed directly as a Python package with command-line interface

How it works

• Uses Google's Identity Provider to authenticate (via OAuth2/OIDC)
• Uses Google's People API to discover a user's contacts
• Uses Google's CardDAV endpoints to download vCard/VCF contacts
• Uses GitPython to manage local git repo for version history under the covers

Usage

Some example commands...

Sync all contacts for foo.bar@gmail.com user:

gcardvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com

Simply export contacts, do not save version history:

gcardvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com --export-only

See the CLI help for full usage and other notes.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+

Installation

Via PyPi

pip install gcardvault
gcardvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com

Via Docker

docker run -it --rm \
    -v ${HOME}/.gcardvault:/root/.gcardvault \
    -v ${PWD}/gcardvault:/root/gcardvault \
    rtomac/gcardvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com

OAuth2 authentication

The CLI initiates an OAuth2 authentication the first time it is run (interactive), and then uses refresh tokens for subsequent runs (headless).

When you use Gcardvault in its default configuration, you are initiating the OAuth2 flow with Google using Gcardvault's client ID. There is nothing inherently insecure about this, since the application is running locally and therefore only you will have access to the data it reads from Google.

That said, it is recommended to create your own client ID through the Google API Console, since the shared client ID may be used by others and subject to limits which may cause unpredictable failures.

rclone has a good write-up on making your own client ID.

You can provide your client ID and secret to gcardvault as follows:

gcardvault sync foo.bar@gmail.com --client-id my_client_id --client-secret my_client_secret

If you are providing your own Google OAuth2 client, you will need to ensure the following APIs and OAuth2 scopes are enabled for the project/client in GCP.

Google APIs:

• People API: people.googleapis.com
• Google Contacts CardDAV API: carddav.googleapis.com

OAuth2 scopes:

• openid
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/carddav

Development

Source repository:
http://github.com/rtomac/gcardvault

Install dependencies and run locally

pip install virtualenv
make devenv
. ./.devenv/bin/activate
gcardvault --help

Run tests

pytest

Build distribution

make dist

Build Docker image

make docker-build

Run via Docker image

make docker-run user=foo.bar@gmail.com

Release to PyPi and Docker Hub

make release

See targets and variables in Makefile for more options.

License

MIT License