iOS 5: How to Create Custom Ringtones and Alerts For the iPhone
If you aren’t satisfied with the default ringtones that came with the iPhone 4S, you can add to your collection. This guide will help you create your own iPhone ringtones and alerts for free.
Apple makes it easy to buy a collection of ringtones and alerts, but if you prefer to make your own ringers and text alerts from movie clips and music, you can do so pretty easily.
We’ll assume you have iTunes 10.5 and iOS 5 installed on your computer and on your iPhone. These new ringers can be set to alert you to new calls, texts and other iPhone sounds.
How To Create Custom Ringtones and Alerts for the iPhone
Find the song or audio clip you want to use. This needs to be a DRM free file. You can use DRM free songs you purchase on iTunes, movie clips you find online and even those you create with your voice.
1. Open up iTunes
2. Find your Song, in this example “santascoming”
3. Right click on it and click on Get Info
Click on Get Info to start making a iPhone Alert Tone
4, Click on Options
5. Set the time of your clip. The clip can be no longer than 30 seconds.
Choose the length of your iPhone Ringtone
6. Click OK
7. Right click on your song and choose Create ACC version. This makes a shortened version of the clip.
Convert your shortened clip to AAC
8. Right click on the new ACC file and choose Show in Finder or Show in Windows Explorer.
Rename your iPhone ringtone to .m4r.
9. Copy the file to your Desktop
10. Rename the file, changing the file extension to .m4r
Change the file type so iTunes knows this is a ringtone.
11.When prompted, click Use .m4r
12. Remove your converted ACC file from iTunes. (Right Click -> Delete)
13. Double click on the new .m4r file and iTunes will add it as a ringtone.
Once you have a Ringtone, iTunes will add this menu.
14. Sync your iPhone with iTunes and make sure you are syncing Ringtones in your iPhone Sync settings.
15. Assign the ringtone or alert in the Settings -> Sounds section of your iPhone.
How to choose your new iPhone ringtone.
Enjoy your new alerts. Make sure you keep your text alerts short and sweet, otherwise you’ll find yourself back at it in a few days. Even the 9 second clip I created is long for a text alert.
If you are on a Mac, you can also create free iPhone ringtones and alerts in Garageband.
Hi! I just tried making ringtones using this tut. Worked like a charm. 10 minutes. Literally. And I’m no gearhead. Thanks for sharing your expertise. I shared your tut on Facebook.
Please help!
I am using iPhone 3gs and windows 7!
In iTunes there is no ‘Ringtone tab anywhere.. please temme how to do it..
Well I finallly did all this, but when I played the song, iTunes didnt reallly create a tab named ringtones!
Help! :(
look for “Tones”
this worked great !!!!!! NO PROBLEMS…. long way to do it but it works….
Thanks!
if its this hard to make a freakig ringtone, im going back to a droid
http://www.Ringer.org is the best ringtone maker I’ve ever seen! Completely free, online, no registration!
i do not believe it is possible to do this for sms alerts, very easy and straightforward for ringtones, but they do not show on the iphone 4s in text alerts, you can you the one`s apple `gives` you but they are crap. I have been trying for 3 days now. Am thinking it is impossible, have seen it work on i phone 4. but not 4s. :-) if anyone out there finds a way please us know.
I have the 4S and it worked for both. trick: don’t just scroll down, scroll UP… that’s where I found mine…
I can’t seem to get it to change to m4r…the name changes, but not the actual extention. Therefore, I’m unable to delete the original file. Help!
you can download a program that converts m4a to m4r from:
http://www.mp3tom4r.net/downlo…
you will need a serial from: http://syrian-cracker.blogspot.com/2011/06/aiseesoft-iphone-4-ringtone-maker-v3326.html
folow the instructions and the ringtones are ready to be played :-))
To those of you struggling like me; after you have imported the m4r-file into Tones in iTunes, right-click the tone and choose Show info. Click the Text-tab and write a name of the ringtone. If this field is empty the tone is not going to sync.
This is what it worked for me! I have followed all the steps and the iTune showed that the sync was done but I was not able to find my ringtones anywhere. I changed their name in the Tones tab and it worked. Thanks and good luck to the rest of you :-)
Hi,
I do not have a “Tones” tab on Itunes on my PC. I have converted the file to an .m4r. How do I create a Tones tab on Itunes?
Please help.
I followed every step and the file gets added in the “Tones” folder and I don’t see a “Ringtones” folder anywhere in itunes, and when I sync up with iphone it doesn’t add up to phone.. can you please help me out with that…
Tones folder is the Ringtones folder. Probably just a little different on every itunes version. But if you don’t find your newly created ringtones/ alert tones on your iphone, I suggest you adjust the time. Refer to Step 5 again, it should not be longer than 30s. When I adjusted the time, it worked just fine on my iPhone 4s. For text tone, not longer than 3s, i guess.
this website fill fix the cant convert to m4r from m4a on windows…. http://gnoud.blogspot.com/
make sure you clear out all meta info from the song. this works
got it to work with both ringtones and texts. the hiccups were converting the file extensions rather than just renaming the files and syncing the ring tones themselves to the phone through the TONE tab.
question though. when i play my regular songs that i turned into ringtones…the 30 second ringtone conversion supersedes the song so it only plays the segmented clip. anyone know how to get past this?
When you’re in the GET INFO/OPTIONS window setting your time, there is a selection below the time entry boxes that says “Skip when shuffling”
This worked perfect for me (original posting) So following the walk thru steps works as well.
excellent, except double click on .m4r file didn’t automatically do anything, so I drag/dropped the file over LIBRARY on left and it loaded it as ringtone. Then i clicked lower down the list under DEVICES to see it’s listed there too. Then sync phone by clicking on Myname iPhone just below DEVICES, look up at the top of the window to make sure TONES is selected, then choose ALL or SELECTED per your preference. (by the way, on my version it doesn’t list the word RINGTONES, just a bell icon next to TONES in the left nav for both LIBRARY and DEVICES/Myname’s iPhone)
I had the same problem as a lot of people, when I double clicked on the .m4r file nothing happened. I tried to drag it into iTunes and still nothing… What worked for me was after changing the copy of the file to .m4r, delete the AAC version in iTunes (as instructed). Then before double clicking on the .m4r file, close iTunes down. Then double click on the .m4r file and you should see the file in the “Tones” portion of the library. It worked for me, hope that helps
I appreciate your easy step by step instructions. I’m usually pretty good with following directions, but for some reason my iphone 4s won’t allow me to sync my ringtones and when I keep trying I get a message saying the song doesn’t exist. What on earth am I doing wrong??? Please, anyone that may be able to assist me with an easy way of getting my ringtones. Tx!
I have followed all of the instructions and my ringtone appears in my call ringtones, but not my text ringtones. How can I fix this?
Im running widows 7 im having a problem with changing the file format through renaming how would i fix this
Hi, I followed the steps and everything seemed to work out fine. I assigned one of my new tones to my “text tones” and it everything worked well for about 24 hours. Now when I receive a text the screen lights up but no sound. So I experimented and assigned another custom tone to my text messages and when I receive a text it works. The tone that does not work plays sounds when selected and it even plays when I set the tone to alert me for emails and other alerts. Just not text. I deleted it, did the entire process again and nothing changed. Thinking that the song is corrupt I made a tone using a random piece of the song and it actually worked. Now I am just plain confused. Please help, thank you.
Does this work with iPhone 4s, iOS 5.1, iTunes 10.5???
No it doesnt work. Apple likes you to buy your ringtones. Only jb iPhones can use custom ringtones
Make sure the file name of your ringtone isn’t overly long. I created a custom one that initially didn’t appear after syncing even though I saw the Ringtone playlist added in iTunes. Saw someone mention you can’t have spaces in the file name, and though perhaps it goes the same with the number of characters you use. After shortening the name and re-syncing I now see the ringtone. Btw mine isn’t jailbroken.
This works wonders. Thank you so so much! You saved my life from dying with default ringtones.
It is showing all of my custom ringtones in my ringtones folder but only shows a few of them in my settings that i can use for alerts?????