How To Make Free iPhone Ringtones!

This may seem like a spontaneous post, but after hearing the same three tones from the many, many iPhones in the Omio office (damn your eyes ‘sci-fi’ tone!), this is as much a public service announcement as anything…

With a little bit of clever fiddling in iTunes, you can make a ringtone out of any of your favourite (DRM-free) music!

Here we go:

1. Fire up iTunes and find the tune you want to convert into a ringtone. Right-click it and select ‘Get Info’ from the list of options.

2. On the song’s ‘Options’ tab, note the start time and end time boxes. Ringtones have to be 30 seconds or less, so listen to your tune and pick out your favourite bit! Make sure the start and end times (input by minutes and seconds) are under 30 seconds, and press ‘OK‘ when done.

3. Right click on the song we have just shortened, and select the ‘Create AAC’ option (Convert to AAC on Windows).

4. The new, shorter version of your song should now have appeared in iTunes, and be ready to turn into a ringtone! So find out where the file is on your computer, usually done by going to ‘Show in Finder/Computer’. You will then see the created file alongside the original, with an ‘m4a’ filetype extension. If you are unable to see it, uncheck the ‘hide file extensions’ option in Windows ‘Tools’.

5. Move the file to the desktop, then rename the extension from ‘m4a’ to ‘m4r,’ which is the format iTunes likes for ringtones! Also keep the name of the ringtone as simple as possible, no hyphens or funny symbols, iTunes is not a fan of that sort of thing…

6. In iTunes, delete the m4a version of your ringtone from the Library. Then go to File, Add to Library. Move the new m4r in there and it should appear in the ringtones section! If you can’t see Ringtones on the Library of iTunes, go into Preferences and turn it on there.

7. Sync your iPhone with iTunes and your newly created ringtone should get transferred over. If it doesn’t be sure to check the Ringtones tab in the iPhone configuration section of iTunes to verify that it is set up to sync your ringtones.

8. That’s it! Enjoy your new, free musical ringtone!

Tags: Apple iPhone, custom ringtone, free iphone ringtones, iphone ringtone, m4a, m4r