Free iPhone Ringtones using iTunes

Being able to choose your own ringtone on your phone is something that should be pretty easy, but not on the iPhone. Apple say that you can buy your ringtones through iTunes, but I’ve never found any on there. So how do you get round this? How do you get your own ringtone on your iPhone?

It’s actually pretty simple, and even more importantly its free and legal! All you need to create your own ringtones is iTunes on a PC or Mac and a song in either MP3 or AAC format that is DRM free. DRM files are normally songs that have been purchased online from places such as the iTunes Store, or imported to your computer using Windows Media Player.

Change import Settings to AAC

Before you start, you need to check some settings in iTunes. In the Preferences window, click on “Import Settings” on the General Tab and make sure that “import using” is set to AAC Encoder.

Show File Extensions

This step is important! If you’re on a PC, you’ll need to make sure that you can view file extensions (music files should show .mp3 or .m4a after the filename). If your PC doesn’t, you can change this by opening your “My Documents” folder, and clicking Tools-> Folder Options. On the “View” tab, you should see an option “Hide extensions for known file types,” Make sure that the box next to this is not ticked, and then hit ok.

Right, now for the fun bit. Find the song you want as your ringtone and play it in iTunes. iPhone ringtones can be a maximum of 30 seconds long, so you’ll need to know the start and end points for the song clip that you want to use, so play the song, and write down how many seconds there are to the part of the song you want as your ringtone. You’ll need the end time too, but this can only be a maximum of 30 seconds.

Select Start and End Times

By now, you should have the start and end points of your ringtone. Right click on the song in iTunes, and select “Get Info”

When the iTunes preferences window opens, you will see 7 tabs across the top, click on the options tab. You’ll see there is a space to enter start and stop times. Put in the times you wrote down earlier and make sure that both boxes are ticked – then hit “OK”.

UPDATE: Thanks to Dean and Snatch for pointing out that you need to ensure that you use : to seperate minutes and seconds, and not a full stop!

Create AAC File

Right click your song again, and this time select create AAC version (or similar.)

UPDATE: In the latest version of iTunes (Version 9.1) the ‘create AAC version’ option has been moved from the right click menu to the ‘Advanced’ menu at the top of the screen.

You should then see a second copy of the song appear in your iTunes music library. In order to change it to a ringtone you’ll need to drag this file to your desktop. You can then delete the 30 second version from iTunes and un tick the start and stop times on the original song.

Rename file to .m4r

Go to the file on your desktop and you should see its called “songname.m4a”. Right click it and choose “rename,” all we want to change here is the .m4a to .m4r. You can rename this song if you want, but the filename must end .m4r

iTunes Ringtone Library

That’s it! All you need to do now is double click the file to add it back to iTunes. If you click on the Ringtones link in the side panel, it should now be listed as a ringtone, rather than a music file.

Sync your iPhone with iTunes

All that is left is to sync your iPhone with your computer. If it doesn’t sync over straight away, make sure the “Sync ringtones” option is selected when your phone is connected.

UPDATE:A few people have had a problem with the ringtones showing in iTunes in the ringtones section, but they aren’t syncing to the phone. To fix this plug your phone in, and on the options screen, uncheck the ‘Sync Ringtones’ box, hit apply and then sync your phone. Once it’s finished, disconnect and re connect your phone. Go back to the options screen and re-check the ‘Sync Ringtones’ box and sync again. This resets the sync information in iTunes and your phone and your ringtones should now show up on your phone.

Download a printable instruction sheet (PDF: 300kb)

Give it a try and let me know how you get on – Got any great ringtones that you want to share with the world? Leave your comments below with the Song title and start/end times and share your creations!