How to Create Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free

Posted on June 19, 2009 by J. Benjamin Stevens

For better or worse, ringtones are here to stay, and everyone seems to want to personalize them.  Fortunately, you can now create simple, free iPhone ringtones from your iTunes library.  I have made several for myself, and you can too by following these easy steps:

  1. Open iTunes 8 and find the song you want to turn in to a ringtone
  2. Right click on that song and select “Get Info”
  3. On the “Options” tab, use the “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes to customize the start and end times for your ringtone
  4. Make sure that your ringtone 40 seconds or less and click “ok”
  5. With your selected song still highlighted, click on “Advanced” in your menu bar and select “Create AAC Version”
  6. A duplicate copy of your song will then appear in iTunes.  It will have the same filename but shorter “time”
  7. Go back to the original song and uncheck the “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes
  8. Drag the duplicate song to your Desktop, right click on it and select "duplicate"
  9. Once the duplicate song has been created on your Desktop, delete the duplicate file in iTunes
  10. On your Desktop, rename the file's extension from "m4a" to “.m4r”.  This turns your song file into an iPhone ringtone file.
  11. Drag the newly renamed .m4r (songname.m4r) file back into iTunes and you should see your new ringtone under “Ringtones” in iTunes
  12. Sync your iPhone to get your new ringtone on it, and you're done!

Note: This process works with MP3, ACC, and AIFF files.  Only DRM-free songs can be used with this ringtone creation process.  Any song downloaded from iTunes Music Store will have DRM (Digital Rights Management), so don’t use those songs.  Any song ripped from a CD or downloaded from DRM-free sources (P2P, Amazon, your friend) will work just fine.

Source:  "iPhone Ringtones: Create FREE iPhone Ringtones Using iTunes 8" by Will Park, published at IntoMobile.com.

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Comments (5) Read through and enter the discussion with the form at the end
Kim - June 19, 2009 11:30 PM

Hi there, and thanks for the directions! I cruised along through the first 9, but am confused with the rest. Do I rename the file's extension under "Get Info?" And dragging it isn't working for me, but I'm still learning the mac. I can't seem to get it back into iTunes.

Thank you again,
Kim

Fran - July 5, 2009 9:38 AM

Tried it - didn't work.

Francis Farren - July 5, 2009 10:16 AM

I take it back! This didn't work for me at first but my 2nd attempt worked! Thank you so much for this information!!!

Francis Farren - July 10, 2009 7:01 AM

I was able to do this with a couple of ring tones but sometimes, when I try to "create an AAC version" of a song I downloaded from iTunes, I get this error message: "“could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted into other formats.”

Is there any way around that one? Let me know at fefarren@comcast.net please.

shanna - August 11, 2009 5:54 PM

Mac Lawyer,
I love you for this--thanks. Clear and concise--and it works!

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