iOS5 create custom ringtone for iPhone
Okay so I've update my iPhone4 to iOS5 one of the first things I did was see if my custom ring tones we're working. Unfortunately only 1 of 3 started working, I think it has something to do with the encoding. Anyway! Let's get into it... here's how you create your own custom ring tones.
Things you need:
1. iPhone (duh)
2. iTunes installed on you're computer
3. Some sexy songs!
Launch iTunes and go to Library > Music. Right click on the song you want and select "Get Info"
When the window popups up, go to the Options tab and tick and enter the Start & Stop time - at this point you may want play the song and write down the time in the song that you want played in you're ring tone. Note: I recommend that you only do a max of 30 seconds.
After you've trimmed your song, right click on the song again and choose "Create AAC Version"
Next we need to locate the song in the file system, in most cases it'll be located in C:\Users\
Rename you're song from .m4a format to .m4r - this converts it to a ring tone.
Note: If you cannot change the format, you'll need to uncheck the 'Hide file extensions that are known' (or something like that). To do this, just bring up Control Panel and search for 'Folder' and you'll see the option for Show hidden files/folders.. follow that and you'll find the option.
After renaming, drag & drop the file into iTunes Library, and Ringtones should appear. (Sorry my screenshot shows that I already have Ringtones)
Lucky last, head over to you're device and select Ringtones and Sync all Ringtones and hopefully it works!
A common error is the ring tone may be too long, simply go back a few steps and trim the song down. I've been able to get a full 1:30 song loaded - so I'm not sure what the limit is.
If you have any problems or suggestions or even better way of doing this, please let me know!
Update: These custom ring tones are available in earlier versions of iOS4 too!
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October 16th, 2011 - 02:56
Thanks for this. Can you walk me through how to assign the ringtone to a Contact? I have tried and as far a I can tell the iPhone either isn’t set up to do this with the new update, or I am doing it wrong, or the ringtone isn’t syncing with my phone. Thank you so much.
October 16th, 2011 - 21:39
No worries!
Go to the Contact you want to assign a ringtone and tap Edit.
There should be an option Ringtone with the option of Default from here it’ll take you to the available ringtones on your phone.
I have a feeling this was in the 4.3 iOS Update the one that comes with iPhone 4. If you still have problems, let me know what iPhone version you have (Settings > General > About > Version)
October 20th, 2011 - 01:54
Thank you for your help, unfortunately my phone doesn’t show any ringtones besides the factory ones. Yours shows the “Cobra” and “Exploration”, and mine should say “True…”. iTunes says that it is on my phone, but it’s not showing up on my phone. My phone is the 3GS version 5.0. Any suggestions? Thanks!!
October 20th, 2011 - 02:02
I just went into iTunes again and in my itunes Library > Ringtones the ringtone is there and plays fine. But under Devices > My iPhone > Ringtones the file is there but has a ! next to it and I can’t get rid of it, and the file won’t play. Maybe this is the problem? I dragged the file from the Library back into my Device again, but the problem is still there. Any idea how to fix it besides re-doing the ringtone from scratch?
October 25th, 2011 - 04:47
Itunes can’t find your file. When you try to play the file, Itunes should say something like “would you like to locate this file?” and you have to find where you’ve stored the file on your computer (desktop, itunes folder or wherever). Hope that helps.
October 17th, 2011 - 08:53
Hi Joey,
Thanks for the tutorial, but I’ve got a bit of a hiccup. I’ve sync-ed the ringtones, but it deletes all my other songs because I manually enter them in. Is there a way out of that?
Thanks!
December 20th, 2011 - 07:47
If you go to the iTunes library, theres a tab that has all your ringtones, you can just drag-and-drop them just like any other audio file, and it should work for you!
October 17th, 2011 - 09:05
Hey Jess, no worries thanks for the feedback!
Just make sure that you have Sync Music ticked. iTunes by default will always try to delete all music if you don’t have it Sync’d against iTunes – stupid idea! Let me know how that goes, I’m yet to have that problem. Only issue I’m facing is old ring tones not working – so I need to re-create them.
On a side note; I tend to use a program called CopyTrans to transfer music, but they are yet to release an update for iOS5. When they do, I’ll post it!
October 17th, 2011 - 21:22
Joey,
I dont have the option of “Create AAC Version” ive only got create mp3 ?? am i blind ?
Thanks
October 18th, 2011 - 02:09
Joey as you may have read on other forums, my custom made ringtones from music won’t sync over to my iPhone4 after the ios5 update. They are in iTunes under my library but won’t sync. I’ve tried un-syncing them, then re-syncing them but doesn’t work. I’ve also tried dragging them to my device, but still no success.
You mentioned in your last post you’re having the same problem. Let me know how you re-create them. Thank you!
October 25th, 2011 - 04:49
Is it because you have them saved as an .m4a and not .m4r? Mine won’t sync either and I’m going to try changing mine from .m4a file extensions to .m4r to see if that fixes the problem. I had two custom ringtones that worked fine under the 4._ operating system but don’t work since I upgraded to iOS5.
October 18th, 2011 - 07:40
@Andrew – haha no mate you’re not blind. Go to Edit > Preferences. In the General tab, click on Import Settings. Just make sure that Import Using is set to AAC Encoder & Setting is on iTunes Plus
Hope that helps!
@Tim – I haven’t yet found a solution! Do you get any error messages when syncing?
From what I’ve debugged, it’s to do with the encoding of my old ringtones. The ringtones that do work have been encoding using iTunes, the old ones have a third party or something else that has been encoded.
But this encoding is only the case if it says the ringtones is not playable or something. There is a second error which says the ringtone is too long. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of it!
It would be easier to start from scratch, but as you may know some ringtones may be a once off – so I’ll see if I can re-encode them correctly and let you know!
October 18th, 2011 - 07:41
Hey
I saved all my ringtones into my itunes library and synced them to my phone, but they dont show up in my phone. Any suggestions?
October 18th, 2011 - 07:50
Cole – just make sure that you’ve got Ringtones sync’d maybe even try doing only selected ringtones rather than all of them too.
This might be related to the above comments too in regards to encoding. Just check what the encoding is, by right clicking on the ringtone in library and selecting Get Info. Encoding with iTunes 10.x seems to be the only one working.
October 18th, 2011 - 12:31
I’m working with my husbands computer (my mac is currently down for the count, and at 7 years old and overloaded with files i can’t blame it) but he is working with windows Vista and for the life of me I can’t make it rename the file to a .m4r from a .m4a I’ve tried the “rename” command, and going through “properties”, do you have any advice?
Thanks in advance!
Kat
October 18th, 2011 - 15:20
Hey Katrina,
Haha not a problem, a 7 year old mac that’s great! I seem to replace computers after every 3 years it seems.
Okay so Vista shouldn’t look too different to my Windows 7 screenshots. There should be an Organize tab/buttony/menu thing above the folders & files, click this and select Folder and search options. This will launch the Folder Options popup. In here, click on the View tab. You’ll need to find the option Hide extensions for known file types, and uncheck it. Now you should be able to rename!
October 19th, 2011 - 13:59
After converting, I can’t seem to drag and drop the .m4r ringtone into the “ringtone” folder. Instead the .m4r file gets added to “music”. Any suggestions?
thanks in advance
October 19th, 2011 - 15:07
What version of iTunes?
Do you have Ringtones as an option in your Library? If not you can enable this by going into Edit > Preferences in the General tab, under Sources tick Ringtones
Otherwise, I’ll need to try replicate it – which might be a bit tricky!
October 19th, 2011 - 21:42
hi! thank you so much ! after converting to the iOS5 i was super sad, cz i was stuck with the lame ringtones!
XXmuch love XX
October 20th, 2011 - 09:10
No worries, one of the first things I did was create my own ringtone. I hate that stupid American Beauty ringtone that almost everyone had at one stage.
October 20th, 2011 - 00:42
The Itunes update for ios 5 doesn’t seem to have ‘create acc version’ ???
October 20th, 2011 - 09:10
Check out the comment posted above, see if that fixes you’re problem. Let me know how it goes
October 20th, 2011 - 01:28
Will I be able to set these for text tones as well?
October 20th, 2011 - 09:14
You sure can! It’s not only limited to ring tones & text tones, you can set it for every other alert. I haven’t set any yet (I keep my phone on silent) – but eventually I’ll play around with it more
October 20th, 2011 - 14:06
I seem to have similar troubles as the last few folks. I have the latest updates on Itunes 10.5+ and my Iphone 4 with IOS 5. I have tried a ringtone converter app on my phone to change songs to m4r extensions as well as changing them manually and saving them on my desktop (running Windows 7 64bit by the way). But for the life of me, I can not in any way, drag the newly converted files to the ringtones folder. I have tried the Itunes ringtone folder as well as the Iphone ringtones folder and neither works. I also try “Open with” and select Itunes, but it never moves. I confess that none of my music files have come from I-tunes so if it needs that encoding, then that may be the case. If so, that would be the issue to address… is there a way to re-encode a non-Itunes song file to include the correct encoding? And just to add more info, I have no error messages or symbols to report, just failed attempts to move the m4r files. I appreciate any feedback from your recent findings… Verizon already has my $60 for my data packages, I refuse to give them more $ for a shortened copy of music I already own! Thanks!!!
October 20th, 2011 - 14:21
Hey MikeM,
Thanks heaps for the info! really helps with trying to debunk this problem. Quick question, did you have any custom ringtones prior to the update? Since I already had the folder prior to the upgrade, I’m wondering if that is the case.
I’m exactly like you, I hate iTunes managing my music – so I used third party applications. I use CopyTrans but they are still working on the iOS5 compatibile version (read here for more info)
Back to the original problem. There is a possible work around.
Go to File and select Add File to Library. Use the dialog to navigate to your ringtone.m4r file and it should import into the Ringtones section.
Let me know how that goes, meanwhile I’ll find out from Apple Developer Center if there’s any reported bug with iTunes 10.x
October 20th, 2011 - 22:54
Yay!!!!!!!!!!
Let me first answer your questions… My phone is brand new (I phone 4 w/ 8gig memory) so it came right away with the IOS 5 OS. This is my first attempt to use my own ringtones. I downloaded an app called “MP3 2 Ringtone” which does an excellent job of helping you edit your music file down to a 20 second file including changing the playback speed or adding a “fade in, fade out” feature if you want. Then by following the instructions on their help page, I ended up copying the new M4r file to an easy to find folder (my “desktop” which is the simplest folder I know of). From there drag and drop does not work for me BUT your simple instructions of using “Add File to Library” worked great! But I may have added a step. I got the file into my ITunes ringtone folder but syncing from there was not enough. I ended up opening my I-Phone’s ringtone folder in a new window, sized it so that I could still see it next to the I-Tune’s ringtone window, and did a drag and drop that way. Once I moved the ringer from the Tune’s folder over to the Phone’s folder, it immediately synced and worked perfectly.
I never knew drag and drop could fail where using keystrokes would still work. Sounds like a bug in need of fixing but I don’t care now that I have a method that works. So far, I do recommend that MP3 2 Ringtone app. It lets you sample your edit jobs instantly so that you can keep fine tuning your start and stop points of the song you need to shorten. Its much easier than doing that through I-Tunes and you can do it on your phone when your bored so it will be ready for you when you hook up to your computer for the final steps. I also thank you, Joey, for getting back to me so quickly and with a helpful answer. This is a great blog you have going here. Keep up the great work and I will be checking back if simpler methods arise. I am an even happier I-Phone owner now!
October 26th, 2011 - 04:05
Hi, I have tried just about everything as well but please tell me how to get your I-Phone’s ringtone folder in a new window on your pc ? If I could access this I could do the same as you did here. I can not access my ringtone folder in any way on my pc it does not even show up ?
October 20th, 2011 - 23:34
Quick update… In lieu of opening a second IPhone ringtones folder window, I can simply drag the ringtone from the Itunes folder and hover it over the phone in the sidebar and it works just the same but easier. Awesome!
October 20th, 2011 - 23:42
Sorry, one more update… The full name of the app I’m using for anyone interested is “MP3 2 Ringtone 4 Free”. The title is listed in its entirety when searching for the app. I found this out while trying to put it on my wife’s phone so she can play, too.
October 21st, 2011 - 10:08
Fantastic MikeM! Love it when things just start to click and work again haha
As for the app, definitely interested and I’ll download it today and try it out myself
Cheers for the feedback, I am going to start ramping up this blog and hopefully start adding more content, tutorials and useful blog posts. Thanks for the support!
October 21st, 2011 - 12:23
Thank you for your help, unfortunately my phone doesn’t show any ringtones besides the factory ones. Yours shows the “Cobra” and “Exploration”, and mine should say “True…”. iTunes says that it is on my phone, but it’s not showing up on my phone. My phone is the 3GS version 5.0.
I just went into iTunes again and in my itunes Library > Ringtones the ringtone is there and plays fine. But under Devices > My iPhone > Ringtones the file is there but has a ! next to it and I can’t get rid of it, and the file won’t play. Maybe this is the problem? I dragged the file from the Library back into my Device again, but the problem is still there. Any idea how to fix it besides re-doing the ringtone from scratch?
Thanks Joey!
October 21st, 2011 - 13:56
Thanks for the update Heather.
The exclamation mark means that iTunes has lost the link reference to the song.
Try fix this by going into you’re device and the Ringtones section, and where it says Sync Ringtones. Uncheck this, hit Apply and then Sync. After it’s done, then Re-tick Sync Ringtones, Apply & Sync. Hopefully this will clear out any broken links on the iPhone3GS and re-apply the new ringtones
Let me know how it goes!
October 22nd, 2011 - 14:54
You ROCK, Joey, thank you so much – it worked!!!!!!! Thank you!!!
October 25th, 2011 - 12:46
No worries Heather! Let me know how you go with it all… I still haven’t applied my ringtones to text tones or other alerts yet! So lazy haha
October 22nd, 2011 - 19:29
I had the same problem of not being able to move it into ringtones. I had to delete the song from the iTunes music section and then add it again to the ringtones and it worked fine. Hope this works for someone else as well.
October 25th, 2011 - 12:47
Thanks for the tip Tony!
October 30th, 2011 - 20:17
Yep, this is the same issue I was having. Deleting it from the larger music library fixed everything.
Thanks, Tony.
October 24th, 2011 - 17:17
Hi Joey,
I’m facing the same issue:
Ringtone appears in iTunes -> Devices -> Ringtones listing, but not in the iPhone -> Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone – Here, it just shows the factory ones.
I’ve tried in vain to get my custom ringtone back into the device.
I’ve tried unchecking ‘Manually manage music and video’ and Re-Syncing the ringtones. But, it didnt work.
Is there anything else I could try?
Thanks!
October 24th, 2011 - 17:51
BTW, my custom ringtone lasts 40 seconds. Does that matter? It was working before the upgrade.
October 25th, 2011 - 12:49
Well… I’m yet to find solid evidence that 30secs is the limit, like I mentioned previously I have one ringtone that is an entire song (well over 1 minute).
October 25th, 2011 - 09:28
I’m having problems too. I had custom ringtones on my iOS4 (iPhone 4). But when I upgraded to iOS5 I lost them. I’ve made new ones (by converting to AAC and creating .m4r files, making sure they’re not over 30 seconds) to try to install and have gotten as far as seeing them in the ringtones section of my iPhone when it’s connected to iTunes, but when I look for them on my actual phone they don’t show as an option – all that’s listed are the standard ringtones. I’ve tried rebooting the phone too. This is SO frustrating!! Please help!!
October 25th, 2011 - 12:46
Can you both check what the encoding is for you’re ringtones?
So in iTunes, under Devices (you’re iPhone) and then in the Ringtones section where it gives you the option to Sync All Ringtones or Selected Ringtones… do any of you’re ringtones appear here?
If they do exist there, try just ticking one and Sync – do any errors popup?
October 25th, 2011 - 21:09
There is no error on Syncing and ringtones appear in iTunes device ringtones listing.
October 25th, 2011 - 23:24
Same with me. I created 3 ringtones of different lengths (all under 30 seconds, one purchased from iTunes, 2 copied from CD’s) and all 3 now appear in my iTunes and under my iPhone when I connect it to my iTunes, but it won’t sync them so that they appear as ringtones. Interestingly, all 3 ringtones appear on my list of music on my phone (I can tell because I renamed them). Could that be part of the problem? Maybe I should try restoring my factory settings and starting from scratch? I wanna get to the bottom of this now…I’m on a QUEST!!!!
ALSO, another problem – I created a ringtone from a song purchased from iTunes – and now that song is on my phone and it cuts off at the same spot that I ended my ringtone (even though I reset the song start and stop time and re-sync’d). I can’t even TELL you how annoying THIS is! Ugh…
October 27th, 2011 - 09:19
Now you’ve got me wondering the same thing!
Hopefully I get some spare time today and I’ll do a video recording see if I can replicate the same steps. But it seems like iTunes is behaving weirdly!
October 25th, 2011 - 17:32
Finally, I managed to get it working!
I re-created the two ringtones, one lasting 20 and the other lasting 40 seconds, after which, they were synced to the device.
Only the 20 secs ringtone has been synced, while the other didn’t.
Probably, 30 sec is the limit for the ringtones.
Thanks!
October 25th, 2011 - 21:11
Ah okay, thanks for checking that out!
October 26th, 2011 - 05:03
I’m having this problem too. The ringtones I had prior to iOS 5 show up on my phone in iTunes, but not in the ringtone section of my phone. On iTunes they’re faded out and they have a sync icon next to them, but they don’t seem to actually be syncing. I’ve tried drag and drop, adding the files with the library option and syncing them with iTunes from the iTunes ringtone menu and nothing seems to work.
I’m really disappointed. My ringtones were made with the Ringtone Maker app. Custom ringtones for each of my friends is something I really liked about my phone. I would really like to get this fixed, or I’ll be returning to iOS 4.
October 27th, 2011 - 09:24
Hey Melanie,
Are you able to take a screenshot and upload it here and just reply with the link to the screenshot on here.
What type of phone are you using? 3GS/4/4S ?
October 28th, 2011 - 19:53
Hi Guys
My iphone on ios5 does not have a facility to personalize the ring tones. Any suggestions?
November 4th, 2011 - 23:07
Hey Ambrose,
What type of phone do you have? Normally the ring tones are under Settings > General > Sounds. Do you have these options?
November 14th, 2011 - 04:41
I followed your steps (including converting the file to m4r) and when I drag it to itunes, it just goes to my music list, not to my ringtones folder. I even tried moving it to my ringtones folder from the music list and it won’t work. Did I miss something? I have ios5 on my iphone.
November 15th, 2011 - 20:35
Also had the same problem with seeing the file in iTunes but not on my iPhone.
I tried now with a shorter name on the ringtone- and it worked
Regards
Ove
December 16th, 2011 - 12:18
Joey i don’t have Ringtones…and only show me Tones in my itunes….and i need the ringtones i can’t sync to my device there…idk why…
December 28th, 2011 - 13:15
Argh.
I have been trying this for 2 nights and I can not get it to work.
Just bought a iPhone 4 last week (iOS 5.0.1; iTunes 10.5.2.11) and I can’t get the steps to work.
First of all, I don’t get a “Ringtones” option in the “Library” on the left hand side, so I went to Edit>Preferences>General>Sources and selected “Tones”. There was no “Ringtones” option, so I selected “Tones”.
Anyway, I found my mp3 song in my iTunes library, went through all of the steps, converted it to AAC, etc, found it in the folder, was able to rename it to .m4r extension, dragged it (and added it) to my iTunes library (it shows up), but it doesn’t show up under “Tones”, nor does it allow to drag and drop it into “Tones”.
Can anyone help?? Thanks!
December 31st, 2011 - 16:51
Hey joey,
i don’t have Ringtones tab on left but shows me Tones in my itunes.. even in preferences i see only tones and has check mark.. i dont see ringtones… i followed everything u said.. after conversion i dragged to library in itunes but it goes to music not to tones!! m using 3gs(iOS 5.0.1) and i use itunes 10.5+ .. pls can u help me out..
January 5th, 2012 - 15:27
I was having the same problem as many users above, where I was successfully able to import the ringtones to iTunes and also sync them to my iPhone (upgraded from 4 to iOS5). It showed in both “Tones” lists for iTunes and for my device. However, when I went to my phone Settings > Sounds > Ringtone, the ringtones were nowhere to be found. I think I’ve figured out the solution!
What happened with me was that I originally synced the ringtones as “music” — they appeared in my song list. I deleted these in iTunes and re-synced, but the songs remained on my iphone. I had to manually delete the ringtone ‘songs’ from my iPhone (via swiping the individual song and clicking the delete button). Doing this then made the ringtones finally appear in the ringtone list!
I was then able to assign them to individual contacts as well as the default ringtone. YAY!
Hope this helps!
PS. THANK YOU JOEY for all the info you gave in this thread! It was all very helpful in getting me to the point where I finally got it to work!
January 27th, 2012 - 13:47
Why Custom Ringtone doesn’t Work With iOS 5 , it showed in my phone but when i choose any one it doesnt make any diferent…………….my custom ringtone showed in the phone but it doesn’t work am getting mad PLZ HELP !!!!!!!
February 1st, 2012 - 14:15
Hello,
I have a problem with my “Tones” folder. I have the Iphone 4s. I can’t add the ringtone to the Tones folder, either by dragging or any other away.
Also, when I connect my iphone I don’t have the Ringtone or Tones tab at top of the menu.
I have iTunes 10.5.3 and Mac OS X 10.6.8. Thank you.