Windows Tools, Help & Guides

If you want to use a Ringtone for your iPhone, of your favorite song, you have a few choices:

• Pay an outrageous amount (sometimes up to $3.99 USD per ringtone or $9.99/month subscription to a ringtone service.)
• Buy an App (there are some out there for $0.99 but I haven’t tested them and can’t recommend them.)
• Follow this guide and make ringtones from your songs–for free.

Learn, in this guide, how to make a ringtone with iTunes for your iPhone.

Pick a Song

If your song is already in your iTunes library, skip to the next step (Trim the song.)

If the song you want to use is on a CD, you will need to create a digital version of it. To do this:

1. Click Edit > Preferences.

2. On the General tab, click Import Settings…

3. Select AAC Encoder and High Quality (128 kbps), and click OK.

4. Put in your CD and, when prompted, rip the CD to your library.

Trim The Song

With the song in your library, you’ll need to trim it. Ringtones, made with iTunes for your iPhone can be no longer than 30 seconds. If you create a ringtone any longer than this, you’ll get this message (much to my frustration):

To trim the song for your ringtone:

1. Right click the song in your library and click Get Info.

2. Click the Options tab and select a Start Time and End Time for this track (remembering to allocate a time of < 30 seconds.)

3. Click OK

Create the Ringtone

1. Now, with the song selected, click Advanced > Create AAC Version.

Once completed, you’ll have two versions of the song:

2.Go to your iTunes library (Type %userprofile%\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music and change the newly created song’s extension to an M4R (iTunes Ringtone file):

If you do not see file extensions, follow this guide.

3. When prompted, click Yes.

4. Now drag the M4R ringtone file to “%userprofile%\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes“:

Copy the Ringtone to Your iPhone

To copy the ringtone to your iPhone:

1. Double check the M4R file was correctly placed by clicking Ringtones under Library:

2. Plug in your iPhone and click in in the left-hand column. Click the Ringtones tab and check Sync Ringtones. By clicking Selected ringtones, you can select specific ones. I just have one:

3. Sync your iPhone.

4. Now go to the Settings app, click Sounds, and click Ringtone. Select your new custom ringtone and enjoy!

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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