How to Make Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free

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By Alexia Petrakos, eHow Contributing Writer

Article Rating: (1638 Ratings)

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Make Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free

So, you bought an iPhone. You love the phone and all its features, but wish you didn't have to pay for your songs twice to get a ringtone. There are plenty of songs in your music library, but no way to make ringtones from any of them. Or are there? Actually, with a little bit of trickery (nothing illegal) you can create ringtones from any one of your non-DRM songs in your iTunes library easily and for free. This works on both Mac and Windows PCs.

*Please note: there may be differences among all the possible combinations of iTunes versions and operating system versions (see Tips below for a way to work around the syncing issues).

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

iPhone
iTunes
Mac or Windows Computer
Non-DRM song (i.e. one not bought from the iTunes Store)

Step 1

Open iTunes.
Step 2

Find the song that you want to make into a ringtone.
Step 3

Listen to the song and find the part of it you want to use. The chorus may be a good place to start.
Step 4

Write down the start and stop times of the clip.
Step 5

Right-click the song and select "Get Info."
Step 6

Click the "Options" tab.
Step 7

Type in the start time of your ringtone in the text box next to "Start Time" in the minutes:seconds (i.e. 2:01) format.
Step 8

Type in the end time of your ringtone in the text box next to "Stop Time." Make sure the ringtone is no more than 40 seconds long.
Step 9

Click "OK."
Step 10

Right-click your song again and select "Convert Selection to AAC." Wait for iTunes to convert your song. It will create a duplicate version.
Step 11

Right-click the ringtone and select "Delete."
Step 12

Click on the "Keep Files" button.
Step 13

Find the file. It's usually in your User folder under Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and under the band's name. It will have an extension of "m4a."
Step 14

Replace the "m4a" extension of your ringtone with "m4r". You can either double-click slowly to rename your file, or right-click and select "Get Info" on a Mac or "Rename" on a Windows PC.
Step 15

Click "Use .m4r" or the PC equivalent when the system warns you that the change may affect the use of your file.
Step 16

Double-click the ringtone file. ITunes will automatically add it to your ringtones folder in your iTunes Music Library.
Step 17

Connect your iPhone and sync your ringtones.

Comments

joeglf said

Flag This Comment

on 20/03/2010 anybody know how to convert an m4r back to an m4a? I accidentally deleted the wrong file in my folder and I can see the and play the song in itunes, but only the ring tone (30 seconds) plays on my iphone....

blane32875 said

on 15/03/2010 just use mobilespin's free online ringtone tool. You can clip a 30sec portion of your MP3 file and create a .m4r file, which you put in iTunes and sync and you are done. Note that if you have iTune songs (which are M4P format), convert them to MP3 first, there are many free tools to do this

rperki8 said

on 15/03/2010 @mal808 You need to be change your settings to view your file extensions. To do this in Windows you do, Tools > Folder Options > View and uncheck the box that say "Hide extensions for known types." Once you click okay you should see the types for all your files (you can either leave it like this or change it back once you're done).