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.
- In iTunes, open the Edit menu and select Preferences… (or just press CTRL+,)
- Under the General tab click the Import Settings… button
- Set the Import Using option to “AAC Encoder”
- 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:
- Pick your song
- Right-click on it, and select Get Info
- Click on the Options tab
- 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
- 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:
- Right-click on your song and select Create AAC Version
- 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
- 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:
- Right click on your 30 second copy
- Select Show in Windows Explorer
- In the window that pops up, you should see a copy of your song with the extension .m4a
- Copy this file to your desktop
- 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!)
- On your desktop, rename the file you just copied and change only the extension from .m4a to .m4r.
- 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:
- In iTunes, click on the Ringtones option under LIBRARY
- Click and drag the new file from your desktop into the Ringtones window
- Depending on your iPhone settings, you now have to either sync your iPhone or drag the ringtone onto your phone in iTunes
- 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.
One thing I have noticed in my own experiments is that I have managed to make ringtones over 40 seconds long. It seems that anything up to a minute is actually allowed. I tried one over a minute and iTunes simply ignored it.
Thanks for the input Craig, I’ll need to give that a try again. I tried longer clips before and they didn’t work but an extra 10 seconds at least would be pretty sweet.
Hello,
Once on my desktop I “Rename” my file to m4a to m4r. However, when I drap song file from my desktop to Ringtones in iTunes is does not copy. Do I need a special file covertsion software? Thanks
Hi Renee,
I actually ran into this a few times before, but I’m not 100% sure what was causing it. It seemed to have some connection to whether or not I had deleted the 30 second AAC version of the song I had made first – if I hadn’t done that then it wouldn’t import properly. Let me know if you figure it out!
Hi Daniel, thank you so much for the response. I actually figured it out. Now here is my next problem. I was able to put the songs into my “Ringtone” column in iTunes but when I try to sync the songs into my iphone it doesnt show up in my iphone? Do you know why this could happen? Thanks again for this information.
Renee
Hmm, have you tried manually dragging the ringtones onto your phone? That’s the way I normally do it.
Got it Daniel. You are so AWESOME! Thanks again for this info.
Great, glad to hear it :)
I can get up to the point where I open my clip in the windows explorer but it doesn’t have the extension anywhere. What do I do? Thnx 4 your help.
Hi EJ,
You need to set Windows Explorer up to show extensions for files. Check out this link: http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00781.htm
How did you get the file to drag from your desktop to the ringtones section of itunes? I’ve deleted the short version in itunes, but the .mr4 still won’t copy.
Suggestions?
Moette,
Just click on the m4r file and drag it into the “Ringtones” section of iTunes.
Nice article. Very helpful indeed.
Hi,
I got everything to work, but the ringtone does not show up on my iphone. I have tried syncing and dragging the ringtone.
Jen,
Not sure what the problem might be here. The ringtone is in your iTunes? I don’t see why it wouldn’t work if you drag the tone onto your iPhone while it’s docked.
Hiya. Have been trying for ages to get this to work! Have managed to set the file up on my desktop as a ringtone…but when you say drag it to the ringtone section of itunes i’m not sure where you mean? The only part of my itunes where it says ringtone is if I click on my iphone and the heading is there along the top – but on yout tutorial it seems to be down the side of the page without clicking on the iphone itself – ie where it says library – I just have music, movies, pod casts, videos, TV shows, radio – no ring tone option! Help!
Hey….worked out another way of doing it, if I just import the file from the desktop it goes straight into the ringtone folder – thank-you! Dragging wasn’t working for me!
Hey Kerry,
Glad to hear it worked out for you. You probably need to go into Edit > Preferences > General and make sure that the “Ringtones” checkbox is checked. :)
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EXCELLENT! This completely works!!! Thank you SOOO much!
BTW, you can put on any size ringtone you want, but when you check the iPhone if it is over 1 minute it won’t appear anywhere. anything under 1 minute is fine, i also tried a 40 second clip and it completely works – THANKS AGAIN!!!
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Hey… I’ve been trying to put some ringtones in my iPhone I’ve gone thru all step. I sync the iPhone and the ringtones r showing in the ringtone folder but I can’t find them in the iPhone when I disconnect…. What do I do?
hey daniel after i drop the file onto my desktop and try to rename it the .m4r doesnt disapear how do i change just the extension
never mind got it from the previous post
Hi daniel. I have downloaded a ring tone in a .rar file and opened it. It is already a .aac file but can not play or drag to ringtones.can you please help me.
Willy,
I’m not sure how to handle aac files. You can’t drag it into the ringtones folder of your iTunes?
Hello! this was very great!
but after i change my rintone into m4r.
and it says ring on the icon.
it doesn’t wanna drag to my itunes, nor my library says ringtones.
it says file doesn’t have extension.
what do i do?
This worked for three ringtones. I went to make a fourth, doing it exactly the same way I had the previous three times, and now the LENGTH of the new AAC converted song is the point in the original song I set it to stop at. For example, Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant. Start: “0:38″ Stop: “0:48″ New song? 48 seconds wrong. I tried rebooting iTunes to no avail. What should I do?
i cant change the extention,by the way i have windows 7
hey, when I put it on my desktop the file doesn’t show up with the extension .m4a, so I don’t know how or where to change it to .m4r. Any Suggestions?
Hillarie, check out the link in this comment above: http://blog.bonetree.net/2009/05/how-to-make-an-iphone-ringtone-using-itunes/#comment-830
Je n’ai pas compris coment faire pour que la sonnerie aille au dessus de 40 secondes, quelqun aurait til la gentillesse de bien vouloir me lexpliquer, merci davacne
there is also another easy way to do it. Go to mobilespin and use their free online ringtone tool. After you use the tool to create your ringtone, it gives you a .m4r file which you put in iTunes and sync and you are done! You can create as many ringtones as you want! Remember if you have iTune songs (which are M4P format), convert them to MP3 first, there are many free tools to do this
After I made my 1:00 ringtone and dragged it into iTunes, it appeared in the Ringtones Library but wouldn’t sync to the phone. I shortened it to :50 seconds and then finally to :30 seconds before it would appear in the Ringtones section under my device (under DEVICES). I wonder if each specific device has a limit to how long a ringtone can be.
Excellent blog! Thanks!
Everyone here of course knows, that it is possible to record their own voices or instruments with, for example Audacity? Connect eg. a microphone to your computer and record your own personal message while running Audacity. After that you can convert it into m4r using this article. .
I was able to make ring tones just fine, but now those songs won’t play on my iPhone as a whole song any more. They are in my music library – they say they are 2:45 long, but when I click on them to play either on my computer or on my iPone, they cut off at 35 seconds. I event ried reloading the songs from my origian; source and they still will only play for 35 seconds now that I have a short copy in my ring tone folder. Anyone have this problem?
hi i’ve got pretty much all the way, but the ringtone is not appearing in the ringtone folder and i can’t drag it over either. I’m not sure whats wrong I’ve followed every step so far!
Thanks!
hopefully someone answers soon lol
but i convert it to the ACC thing but when i go to locate it
it doesnt have the extention m4r to change to m4a ..
i dono what t do
Brianne, it sounds like you need to make file extensions visible in Windows. There are several comments in this thread about how to do this.
Hi I have an mp3 song and it says chris brown i can transform ya and that’s it there is no m4a on it what do I do to make it a ring tone cos iv done the 30 sec and made an aac version but when I go into explorer there is no m4a when I rename it so what needs doin?
Matthew, i had the same problem this is what you need to do: “You need to uncheck the “hide extensions for known filetypes” in the Folder Options > View panel of windows explorer” I got that from a comment made on the youtube video…it works great afterwards!!!! Thanks alot Daniel!!! You ROCK!!!!
You’re welcome! :)
Was able to create file and drag to ringtone folder in itunes, have selected sync all rintones, only one there, and my phone is plugged into pc and comes up with message “Song” was not copied to the iPhone “my iPhone name” because it could not be found. Please help.
forgot to add error message comes up when i am syncing to the iphone
I was able to get everything just right until dragging did not work so I went to library and import (it said ringtone like it was supposed to) and I click on it to import and it doesn’t show up on my ringtones on iTunes or Music! Please help@
hey Dan, when i open “show in windows explorer” the file doesnt have the .m4a after it. when i copy to my desktop there is no “.m4a” right clicking and going to prefrences it says it is saved in m4a though. i tried putting .m4r after the name but it doesnt change. i saw the previous post about deleting the AAC file but it still doesnt work.
Hey Robert,
It looks like you need to configure Windows to display file extensions. There are a few comments in this thread with links on how to do that. Hope it works out for you! :)
Got it! your the fucking man dan!
When I right-click on song after I crop it to 30 seconds, I dont see a display that says “Create AAC Version”..thanks for any help you can provide
ACC Encoder is checked in the preferences section…