How To Make an iPhone Ringtone Using iTunes

Want to make your own iPhone ringtones and avoid paying up for content that you already have? This is a quick and easy tutorial on how to do so using iTunes. I’m using Windows here, but the process is essentially the same if you’re on a Mac. Before you start, you’ll need to set iTunes up to import music using the AAC format. Personally, I rip all my music to MP3 so whenever I do this, I switch to AAC and then back to MP3 when I’m done.

1. In iTunes, open the Edit menu and select Preferences… (or just press CTRL+,)
2. Under the General tab click the Import Settings… button
3. Set the Import Using option to “AAC Encoder”
4. Click OK to get back to the preferences window and then OK again to get back to iTunes

Now we’re ready to start. The first thing you need to do is pick a song. This part is actually really important because a) you don’t want to pick a crappy/annoying song and b) you need a song that you can get a good 30 second clip out of. For this example, I’m going to choose I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones. The reason we need a good 30 second clip is because iPhone ringtones run in 30 second loops, so we’ll need to create a short version of our chosen song that runs for that long. So, listen to the song a few times and watch the timer at the top of the iTunes window. I usually start right at the beginning and listen for exactly 30 seconds – if I like that chunk of audio then I’ll go with that, otherwise I’ll keep listening and make a note of a good start/end time. This might take a few listens to do, so be patient. Once you’ve decided on your start and end times, you’ll need to tell iTunes to start and end the song at those times:

1. Pick your song
2. Right-click on it, and select Get Info
3. Click on the Options tab
4. Check both the Start Time and Stop Time boxes (unless you start from the beginning, in which case you don’t need to check the Start Time box) and enter the appropriate times in the respective boxes
5. Play the song again in iTunes just to make sure it cuts off properly and runs for exactly 30 seconds

Note that doing this does not actually change your song – once you’re done this process you can simply uncheck the Start/Stop Time boxes in the steps above and your song will play normally.

Now that we have our 30 second audio clip set up properly, we need to create a copy of it. Because we’ve set up the start and stop times explicitly, the copy that iTunes creates will only be 30 seconds long which is exactly what we want for our ringtone:

1. Right-click on your song and select Create AAC Version
2. This process will take a second or two, and once it’s done, you’ll see another copy of your song pop up in your list
3. Make sure that the length of the copy you created is only 30 seconds

Now that we have our 30 second copy, we need to move the file out of iTunes and then reimport it as a ringtone:

1. Right click on your 30 second copy
2. Select Show in Windows Explorer
3. In the window that pops up, you should see a copy of your song with the extension .m4a
4. Copy this file to your desktop
5. Back in iTunes, delete the 30 second copy of your song (caution: make absolutely sure you’re deleting the copy you just made and not your original version!)
6. On your desktop, rename the file you just copied and change only the extension from .m4a to .m4r.
7. Once you do this, you should see the icon change so that the word “RING” is displayed under the iTunes logo

Our ringtone is now actually complete, and all we have to do is add it to iTunes and then our phone:

1. In iTunes, click on the Ringtones option under LIBRARY
2. Click and drag the new file from your desktop into the Ringtones window
3. Depending on your iPhone settings, you now have to either sync your iPhone or drag the ringtone onto your phone in iTunes
4. You’re done!

Your ringtone is now on your phone, and you can set it up as your default ringtone, your alarm, etc. What I like to do is set certain songs as the ringtones for specific people in my contact list. This is not only cool but it’s useful if you use the iPhone headphones a lot – now you don’t have to take your phone out of your pocket when your music is interrupted by a phone call, you can easily tell who it is just by what song is played! Now that you’re finished, don’t forget to uncheck the Start/Stop Time options for your song, otherwise you’ll only ever hear 30 seconds of it.

Here’s a screencast that I made to go along with this tutorial. It’s actually kinda funny, but making this stupid video was a huge pain in the ass. Maybe I should be doing a tutorial on how to create screencasts ;). It’s in HD, so make it fullscreen and hit the HD button in the Youtube player to get the full effect.