When trying to get ringtones for your Apple iPhone, you have a few different options. You could purchase ringtones from within iTunes, or you can create ringtones from your existing music library using these steps.
Note: These steps will only work for music purchased from the iTunes Store. You can check if an item was purchased by right-clicking the top sort bar and checking the Kind option. Items will show as “Purchased” or “Protected” if they were purchased via iTunes.
- From within iTunes, go to “Edit” > “Preferences” > “Import Settings“.
- Ensure the “Import Using” setting is set to “AAC Encoder“.
- Go to your music library, right-click/ctrl-click the song you wish to use for a ringtone, then select “Get Info“.
- Under the “Options” tab, check the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” boxes, then set the song up to play at a 30 seconds or less interval. In this example, I’ve stopped it at 30 seconds (0:30). Click “OK‘ when finished.
- While the song is still highlighted in iTunes, select “File” > “Create New Version” > “Create AAC Version“.
- A new 30 second version of the song is created in iTunes. Drag and drop this file to your desktop.
- Right-click the file on your desktop and rename it with a .m4r extension.
- Connect your iPhone to your computer.
- In iTunes, select the icon for your device, then open the “Tones” option under the “On My Device” section.
- Drag the music file we re-named in step 7 to the “Tones” folder in iTunes.
- Select the “Tones” option in the “Settings” section and ensure the “Sync Tones” is checked.
- Press the “Sync” button to sync iTunes with your iPhone.
- After syncing your device, the song is now available to select as an iPhone ringtone under “Settings” > “Sounds” > “Ringtone“.
Once you’re done with all this, be sure to right-click the song we originally used, choose “Get Info” and set the interval back to normal under the “Options” tab.
These steps work for iTunes for Windows, Linux, and OS X on your computer and all versions of iOS for your iPhone.
