Transferring contacts to a Prius using only Apple products
June 17th, 2013 | roo
I have been frustrated for about 7 years by the fact that my prius has a phone book application, but my iPhone cannot connect to it.
I have been searching for several years for a solution. and I finally found one using my MacBook Air.
This worked using a 11-inch, Mid 2011 MacBookAir to connect to a 2005 Prius. I sat inside my car so I didn’t have to worry about signal degradation.
On the MacBook:
In the Address Book application:
Create a contact group of all the contacts you want to copy over to the Prius phonebook.
Export that contact group from address book to a vcf file.
On the Prius:
Telephone -> Settings -> Bluetooth -> Settings -> Change
Change the bluetooth Passkey to 0000.
Telephone -> Settings -> Bluetooth -> Settings -> Add Phone
On the MacBook:
In System Preferences:
Make sure Bluetooth is On and Discoverable.
Turn on “Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar”.
In the Bluetooth menu bar application:
Click “send file”.
Find the address book vcf file we created earlier.
In the window of devices that pop up, look for HANDS FREE, that’s the Prius.
Attempt to send the file to the Prius.
It will ask if you want to pair with HANDS FREE, say yes.
The pairing should succeed, but the sending of the file will fail.
Go back to Bluetooth System preferences.
Click on HANDS FREE in the left sidebar, then click on the gear at the bottom and “Update Services”
On the Prius:
Telephone -> Settings -> Transfer Phone Data -> Start Transfer
You can choose whether to add entries to your phone book, or overwrite the whole book. If this is your first time tranferring contacts it doesn’t matter which you choose.
Once the Prius starts listening for a transfer, this should update the description of HANDS FREE in the Bluetooth settings on the Macbook to include the line “Services OBEX Object Push”
On the MacBook:
Again, use the Bluetooth menu bar app to “send file” the address book vcf file we created earlier. It should now transfer the file, and fill your phone book!