How to Make Custom iPhone Ringtones Using iTunes all version for Free

here’s something about Android phones that isn’t exactly available with iPhones and my buddies who have an Android phone do make fun of it: you can’t easily have custom ringtones on the iPhone. Now, that’s something Apple should be working on but knowing things, one would judge better.

Apple doesn’t have an easy way out to create custom ringtones. But as the saying goes, it’s tough but not impossible. In this short little post, that’s what we’re going to do: create custom ringtones in iTunes and sync them with your iPhone.

The Thing About Creating Custom iPhone Ringtones in iTunes

Okay, you’ll first need to know the thing about iTunes ringtones. Unlike on most other smartphones, you can’t just have any file saved as a ringtone. There are a couple of things to do before:

• Create an AAC version of the tone that you want as custom ringtone
• Change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r so it’s recognized as a ringtone by iTunes
• It shouldn’t be longer than 30 seconds (it’s 40 but having it at 30 makes it safer)
  

So let’s make some ringtones (follow this procedure if you’re trying to make a ringtone out of a song you have)

Step 1). Open iTunes and find that song that you want to make a ringtone out of. For safety, duplicate this and have it so if something goes wrong, you don’t end up losing that song.

Step 2). Now, right-click and select ‘Get Info’

Step 3). Select the Options tab and you have ‘Start time’ and ‘Stop Time’ check boxes.

Step 4). Check them and enter the desired start and stop time for the ringtone. Make sure it doesn’t exceed 30 seconds.

Step 5). Click OK to apply the settings.

Step 6). Head back to iTunes library and right-click on the song you just edited.

Step 7). Select ‘Create AAC version’

Step 8). Now you got a .m4a version of the song. It’s time to rename the extension.

Step 9). Go to the folder where the .m4a version of the file is. (Select the file, click ‘File’ menu and select ‘Show in Finder’ (for Mac) or ‘Show in Explorer’ (Windows)

Step 10). Rename the extension to “.m4r”
(Note: if you don’t see the .m4a extension along with the file, you should make sure it’s visible and then change the extension. Otherwise, you’d just be changing the name of the file and not its extension. (Tools -> Options in Windows lets you enable the extensions view).

Step 11). After you’ve renamed the extension to .m4r, head back to iTunes and check the “Tones” section. Your new ringtone should be out there. (if not, drag-drop)

Sync your iPhone with “Sync Tones” enabled and your new ringtone should be up on your iPhone too.

Alternatively:1

In case you already have a ringtone (not longer than 40 seconds), you can do this:

• Open it in iTunes
• Create an AAC version of the file (.m4a)
• Rename the extension to .m4r
• Now, check the Tones section to find your new ringtone.

If it’s not added, drag and drop the ringtone in iTunes