How to Make MP3 Ringtones on iPhones

If you have a new iPhone and plenty of music, then you've wondered how you could take advantage of all this media in a personally expressive way.

The answer is clear: ringtones.

There is a legal way to turn any piece of music into a fresh ringtone.

Apple would have you pay a dollar for a ringtone made out of a song you purchased from the iTunes store. But you can use this process for how to make MP3 ringtones for your iPhone using other music in your library. You can rip the media from your cd collection or even record something yourself.

This process assumes that you have already imported the song you want to make into a ringtone into your iTunes music library. If you haven’t, just open the file with iTunes and it will automatically import.

How to Make MP3 Ringtones on iPhonesStep one is getting your fresh new ringtone set up and on your iPhone. For this there are two options:

Option #1 - This option is easy, but it uses GarageBand, which is only available for Mac--if you have a PC or if don’t have GarageBand, proceed to option #2.

  1. First, you need to make sure you have updated your copy of GarageBand - you can do this by running the Apple Software Update Tool.
  2. Open iTunes and select the song that you wish to make into a ringtone.
  3. Open GarageBand.
  4. Drag the song from your itUnes Music Library to the GarageBand window.
  5. Now click the loop button (it is the button all the way to the right that looks like two arrows pointing at each other in a loop.) This will activate loop mode and highlight the loop region selector.
  6. Then, drag the region to overlap with the part of the song that you want to be your new ringtone. (Your ringtone should not be more than 40 seconds in length.)
  7. Listen to it a few times and make sure you’ve got the length of time right.
  8. Now click the ‘Share’ menu and select ‘Send Ringtone to iTunes.’

From there, GarageBand and iTunes will take care of the rest of the process. The ringtone will show up in your ringtones folder in the iTunes Music Library and sync to your iPhone automatically next time you sync.

Option #2

  1. First, you must open iTunes and find a song you think would make a great ringtone. It should be timeless, but also a sign of the times - personal, but universal.
  2. Listen to the song and locate the part that would make the best candidate for a ringtone, noting the beginning and end times of the section. It would be a good idea to write these times down somewhere. (Your ringtone should not be more than 40 seconds in length.)
  3. Now, select the song in iTunes, right-click, and select “Get Info.” You can also find this under the ‘File’ menu or by pressing command+i.
  4. Under the ‘options’ tab, select the check boxes for ‘Start Time’ and ‘End Time’ and enter in the times you wrote down as the beginning and end of the clip you want to have as your ringtone. Then click ‘OK.’
  5. Now tight-click the same song, and select “Convert Selection to AAC’ and iTunes will create a copy in .m4a format. This file will be stored in your music directory which, if you didn’t change it is located under music (or my music in windows) > itunes > itunes music library.
  6. Select the file (the .m4a version) right-click and select ‘Get Info’ (or command+i) [on a PC select ‘rename’ and skip to step 7.] Then find the ‘Name and Extension’ field.
  7. At the end of the name, change the file extension from ‘.m4a’ to ‘.m4r’ - you will probably get a message box warning you that this will affect the use of the file, click “use .m4r’ [or ‘Apply’ on a PC].
  8. Double-click the .m4r file. This should open up iTunes and automatically put it in your ringtones folder. From there, it will automatically sync with your iPhone.

Congratulations--you have created your own free ringtone and set it to sync to your iPhone in just minutes. You can repeat this process as many times as you wish for however many songs you would like. You can make distinct ringtones for each of your friends and iPhones have plenty of storage space, so go wild. The process is legal and simple, so there’s no reason not to put together a nice library of ringtones, in case you are ever feeling a change on the go.

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