Create Custom Free iPhone Ringtones Using iTunes
Apple iPhone comes with a miserable set of default ringtones with bad quality and variety. Apple advices you to buy ringtones from iTunes store. But the not so well kept secret is that you can create ringtones from the music you own with nothing more than iTunes.To create custom ringtones for iPhone you will need iTunes version greater than 8.0 and music with no DRM. MP3's you have ripped or purchased from Amazon store etc would work perfectly.
- Open iTunes and select the song you want.
- Right click the song and select "Get Info". Select the Options Tab.
- Input the values you want in the "Start Time" and "Stop Time" boxes and check the boxes. The duration of the ringtone cannot be more than 40 seconds. So if you want 40 seconds from 2 minute 15 seconds into the song, the values will be 2:15 and 2:55 respectively.
To know the time values you can monitor the the value appearing on the left side of the timeline displayed on top when a song is playing.
- After this select "Advanced -> Create AAC version" from menu. If you don't have that option check your iTunes version. You need at least version 8.0 for this. Upon selecting that option iTunes will create an AAC version of your song with the start and stop times you have specified. The new file will appear alongside the old one. Drag and drop this file to your desktop or any convenient folder. After that you can delete the newly created file from iTunes (Right click and select "Delete").
- The file you just copied on to your dektop/folder will have an extension m4a. You need to change this extension to m4r. On Mac, select the file and press enter. You will able to edit the filename now. Windows might hide the extension making it impossible to change the extension. For enabling showing of extensions in Windows, open Explorer (open My Computer for instance) and select "Tools -> Folder Options -> View". In the "View" tab uncheck the option "Hide extensions for known file types". Click on "Ok" to save the changes and now you will be able to change the extension.
- After changing the extension to m4r, drag and drop the file on to the iTunes Library Label. This will import the ringtones into iTunes. Clicking on the ringtones label will show all imported ringtones.
- When you sync the iPhone next, this ringtone will be copied to your iphone if you have enabled syncing of ringtones.