iPhone Ringtones: Create FREE iPhone ringtones using iTunes 8
By Will Park on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 5:50 PM PST In Announcements, Apple, iPhone, iPhone OS
Remember those good, old days when creating an iPhone ringtone was as easy as renaming a song in your iTunes library to a “.m4r” extension and then syncing it back with your iPhone? No? Well, trust us when we say that iPhone ringtones were never easier (or free-er) to create.
That is, until iTunes 8. With the release of iTunes 8 – which brought with it Genius Playlists – creating iPhone ringtones has once again become a painless process. iTunes 8 allows the user to customize a particular song’s start- and end-time, paving the way for an iPhone ringtone creation “hack” that requires nothing more than iTunes itself.
Keep in mind that iTunes will allow you to create a ringtone from a song downloaded through the iTunes Music Store, but those ringtones come with fees… and no one likes fees. Follow this guide to create free iPhone ringtones for free using nothing more than iTunes.
To create simple, free iPhone ringtones from your iTunes library, follow these steps:
- Note: This process works with MP3, ACC, and AIFF files.
- Note: 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.
- Fire up iTunes 8
- Find the song you’d like to turn in to a ringtone
Select the song you want to use as your iPhone ringtone
- Right click on the song
- Select “Get Info”
- Hit the “Options” tab
- Check both the “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes
Customize the start and end times for your ringtone clip
- Specify what time interval you’d like to use as your ringtone clip (Make sure your ringtone is 30 seconds or less!!)
- Click “OK”
- Make sure the song you want is still highlighted
- Click on “Advanced” in your menu bar
- Select “Create AAC Version” or “Create Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Lossless Version” (Make sure your iTunes “Import Settings” are set to “AAC” or “Apple Lossless” and not “MP3″)
You want to create a duplicate song file with the customized playing time
- A duplicate copy of your song will appear in iTunes – this new song will have the same filename but shorter “Time”
- Go back to the original song and uncheck those “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes
See the duplicate song underneath the original song?
- Go back to the original song and uncheck those “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes
- Drag the duplicate song to your Desktop
Duplicate song file on Desktop
- Once the duplicate song is copied to your Desktop, delete the duplicate file in iTunes
Notice that the duplicate song file is gone - deleted
- On your Desktop, rename the file with the “.m4r” file extension – Use the new extension
- This turns your song file into an iPhone ringtone file
Use the new filename extension
The .m4r file is now a ringtone file
- This turns your song file into an iPhone ringtone file
- Your “songname.m4a” file should now be named “songname.m4r”
- Drag the newly renamed .m4r (songname.m4r) file back into iTunes
- Drag the file over the “Library” column and release when “Library” becomes highlighted
- You have to delete the duplicate song file (Step 12) otherwise iTunes won’t import your new .m4r file
- You should see your new ringtone under “Ringtones” in iTunes
- Sync your iPhone to get jiggy with your new iPhone ringtones!
Enjoy your free iPhone ringtone library!
> To create simple, free iPhone ringtones
> from your iTunes library, follow
18 long steps? (and you missed quite a few)
That’s “simple” in your mind????
I’m very glad someone got to it before me. that’s a whole bunch of stuff to do. i know the g1 will have an app to create a ringtone right on the phone, but enough about that. just download wavpad. its alot easier, probably alot more options. but I’m sure if you don’t want to download a simple program, which i understand if you don’t, but have fun taking 10 minutes to create a 30 second ringtone!
You could just get free ringtones here. No registration required and guaranteed safe.
Thanks for this tutorial !!
At least thank the guy for giving us a way to make ringtones and stop yapping; and btw Blake it’s not like a real 3 min song is made in 3 mins, it takes days so making a 30 sec ringtone in 10 mins is actually pretty good.
Hi, I have a litttle problem, I did all the steps, but when I sync it, my IPHONE don´t read de Tones… and it loooks like I don´t have any.
Help!
I did this but… the only ringtone that shows up is the last one I just put in my phone
The principle upon which this tutorial is based is simple. I apologize if the number of steps has you thinking otherwise.
I wanted to expand the tutorial to ensure that everyone could follow the directions without making assumptions. Had I condensed the tutorial to…
1) Edit playing time
2) Make Apple AAC version – drag duplicate to desktop
3) Rename new file with .m4r extension
4) Drag back to iTunes
…. I’m sure there would be some users left confused as to what steps are required to A) Make an AAC version, B) Delete the iTunes duplicate, C) Edit playing time, etc. etc.
For those having problems – are you running jailbroken iPhones?
This didn’t work for me, yes I’m using a jailbroken phone 2.1 and iTunes 8. After completing the steps it never shows up in my ringtones section.
Nevermind, it worked! First the section of the song has to be 30 seconds or less.
At first it would not show up in the iTunes ringtones section. It turns out you can’t just edit the file name and affix .m4r at the end. For Windows XP users you should to put it in a folder go to TOOLS, choose FOLDER OPTIONS, EXIBITION MODE, then you can see the file extension and change it.
Thanks! I would rather create my ringtones this way instead of using d/l and using a program.
Thank you Steve!! That’s what i was missing all this time!!
Well, when I try to convert to an ACC file at the advanced tab it only gives the option to convert to an mp3 file so I can’t follow through on the steps. Now someone did update my Itunes from 8.0 to 8.1 so does that make the difference?
I agree that this is still really simple, but blake is right, wavepad is free and offers more options (particularly fading). I was having the problem with the ringtones not showing up too, but it seems like it was because they were too long. I don’t know exactly what the cut off is, but I have one that is 34 seconds and works, but one that is 45 seconds and does not work until I cut it down to 30 seconds.
Having the same problem as Victoria. I don’t have the option for “Create ACC Version” OR “Create Apple Lossless Version” in my iTunes 8.0.1. All I see in the Advanced tab is “Create MP3 Version”. All my songs are from my cd’s. What’s going on???
Please help!!!!
If they are from your cd’s they and you ripped them using itunes they are probably ACC files already so no need for the first 10 steps. I got 8.0.1 and it works perfectly.Thanks very very much. Now if only they was a copy and paste hack!
If it says create mp3 you just need to adjust the import options.
In iTunes 8:
Go to iTunes -> Prefrences
Select the General Tab
Click Import Settings
Change “Import Using” to AAC Encoder
In iTunes 7 I think it was under the advanced tab, but I don’t remember for sure.
Dear Will,
Thank you very much for sharing this. I use XP and once I created a folder and saved it there rather than on the desktop it worked.
Keep up the good work!
I’d seen similar posts, but I couldn’t get this to work. Yes it is a lot of steps, but at least this posting was complete. The key for me was knowing to delete the duplicate before re-importing the .m4r version.
If I had to do several ringtones, I might want to streamline with an app (the first post was rude). However some of us just want one or two ringtones. This approach got me my “24″ ringtone on my new iphone without having to buy a program, join a ringtone club, or otherwise risk my computer’s health.
I thank you for spending the time to post this!!
Hi All,
Its showns in my ringtones.. but when i sync it it just stays in itunes not sync’ing to the phone.. any idea why??
Got it working, but see you can only use a song for 39sec. which i suppose is fine cause then your voicemail kicks in afterwards. thx anyway!!
I can’t find any extension .m4a behind the name so can’t change it into .m4r . I followed the guide step to step but stuck right there. What’s the problem??
PC – Go to Folder Options and make sure you can view full filenames and/or file extensions.
Mac – Go to Finder>Preferences>Advanced and make sure you check the view all extensions.
Windows- my documents, on top left under tools- folder options
Hii! i did all the steps but when i rename it, it didnt work
THANKS for sharing the solution to adding my mp3 files to iphone ringtones!!!!! It is not that hard….as Blake suggests.
This is excellent . Great work
works well .. just keep them no longer than 39 secs each.. really easy to do takes about 5 secs to do each track when you get the hang off it.. cheers
This work! Thanks so much for sharing this!
Anybody have any luck doing this in Vista?
i have windows vista. how do you rename the file to .m4r using windows vista? i am lost. please tell me!
for editing the song i just use windows movie maker, its basic and simple, i cant pass the step where it converts ot aac because its blacked out, im using itunes 8, iphone software 2.1 BUT its jailbroken so does it make any difference??
I am having a problem getting it to go from m4a to m4r. I keep renaming the extension and it wont work… what do i do?
Great, I really like this trick its easy and very proffesional trick
Thanks buddy
Todd Todd, you have to go into Windows Explorer, then tools, foler options, and view. Then uncheck “hide extenisons for known file types”. Then when type .m4r at the end of your file (which you will have to do after you unchecked this option) it will change it to an m4r file! If you are using Vista and don’t see the tools options at the top of the screen all you have to do is click tab. I did this with Vista so I’m not sure if it it the same for other Windows.
Hope this helps! I just had the same problem lol
oops, I meant to say all you have to do is click alt! not tab! sorry
Ok I did all the steps and changed the file to m4r and saved it onto my desktop when I double click it or try to drag it, it doesn’t go into itunes. Can anyone help me please!
thanks – had just about given up on creating ringtones – this worked for me
[now to get used to typing on the iphone keyboard, just got it today!]
FYI.
Not sure the exact time, but it has to be shorter than a certain number of seconds.
In an old post I read 40 seconds and when I shorted the song it was syncable to the iPhone, but when it was like 3 minutes it was NOT.
Dude,
great work! you are the man!
Great stuff – worked like a dream!!
Hey, thanks so much! this is absolutely great and blake is a complete moron, especially since it takes him 10 minutes. i appreciate how much time you obviously put into doing this, and you made it ridiculously easy.
Cheers!
Thanks Will! I’m not sure what the 10 minutes guy’s problem was, it took me about 30 seconds to create a ringtone. Much appreciated!
Nate
Thanks so much for this, Will and also Melissa for clearing things up for us vista users. Thanks to y’all, now I can have my favorite CAKE song as my ringtone for free!!
how do u make the ringtone more than 30 seconds because it wont let me make a ringtone more than 30 seconds
Awesome! It works great…and its FREE!
Beautiful! Thank you so much for the info!
This doesn’t work.
Step 9 isn’t an option…
Select “Create AAC Version” or “Create Apple Lossless Version”
Step 9 does work, but you have to make sure your import settings are set to “aac version” not “mp3 version”
Excellent contribution! Thanks for pointing that out!
Guide updated to clarify Step 9.
Thanks for this, it really is explained very clearly and simply.
Is there a reason why the iphone will only show one of the new tones within the ringtones selection area? Its a little frustrating. Cheers
Thank you so much for this trick. It is quick, not that long as it seems, actually it is a one minute job! and the result is so fine.