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Here’s how you can take any part of a song and make it a ringtone for your iPhone for free. This detailed step-by-step guide is all you need.
Can’t find your favorite song ringtone? Don’t want to pay for ringtones? You are at right place. Here you’ll learn how to make a ringtone out of the exact part of a song you love in just minutes – maybe less.
Below you’ll find a detailed step-by-step guide that covers everything you need to know to successfully convert any audio file to a ringtone.
The process is completely free, but it requires you to have access to iTunes on Mac or Windows 10. Excuse me. Nothing we can do about that part.
Unfortunately, there’s no change: You can’t use an app on your iPhone. Apple doesn’t allow apps to write ringtones to the special folder where they should reside, so ignore apps that say they can create ringtones. Seriously, they can’t.
So, to turn that catchy riff into your new ringtone, read on.
Create Your Song
Before we begin, the song you want to use must be in your iTunes library on your computer. It can’t be from Apple Music, as you can’t convert Apple Music tracks to AAC.
So if you don’t have something suitable in your iTunes library, you’ll need to import at least one MP3 or AAC file into iTunes.
The file doesn’t have to be a song. You can use the Voice Memos app on your iPhone to record real-world voices or people’s voices to turn them into ringtones.
Just make sure you have the latest version (visit the Mac App Store, or the Microsoft Store on Windows 10), then launch iTunes by double-clicking its shortcut or finding it in the Start menu.
From Library, click on the album that contains the song, then right-click on the song you want to use and select Song info as shown in the image above.
Choose Time
In the separate window that opens, click on the Options tab and then tick the Start and Stop boxes. Type in the time you want the ringtone to start and stop. If the song is to start from the beginning, there is no need to tick the Start box.
To know what time to enter in these boxes, you must first listen to the track and note the time you want it to start. The stop time must be within 30 seconds, as this is the maximum length for a ringtone.
Top Tip: If you want to be really precise about where the ringtone starts, use a decimal point. For example, if the section of music starts between 44 and 45 seconds, try entering 0:44.5 in the Start time box. You can also specify start and stop times in thousandths of a second, so you can get 0:44.652. can type
When you’re done setting the start and stop times, click OK to dismiss the window.
Create Aac Version
Now select the song again by clicking on it once. Then go to the File menu, choose Convert, then Create AAC version. (If you see ‘Create MP3 version’ or something, fixing that is in the next step.)
What will happen is that iTunes will save only the portion of the song between the start and stop times you selected as a new track in your library.
If your song is tagged with album and artist information, the new, shorter track will appear as a duplicate track in the same album. You can identify it by its duration, which is shown on the right. If the album, artist, and song information doesn’t exist, it will appear in your library as a new album containing a song.
Aac Encoder
If you don’t see the option to Create an AAC version in step 3, it’s because your CD rip settings aren’t set up correctly. To change this, click the Edit menu and choose Preferences…
Now click on Import Settings next to ‘When you insert a CD’ and choose the AAC encoder from the drop-down menu next to ‘Import using.
Reset Start And Stop Times
In the case of Housekeeping, click the original album containing the song and right-click on it. Click on Song Info, and then click on the Options tab.
Now uncheck the Start and Stop times to revert them to their original times, and then click OK.
Otherwise, when that track is played in the future, it will only play the section between your start and stop times. You probably don’t want that to happen.
Find New Aac File
Navigate to the duplicate track (or duplicate album containing the newly created track) that you are going to use as a ringtone.
Right-click on the song in the album and click on Show in Windows Explorer. If you’re on a Mac, the option is called Show in Finder.
This is so you can change the extension of the file (so it becomes a ringtone), which we’ll do in the next step.
Change File Extension
The file should now be highlighted in the window that opens, and it should be called something. m4a (where ‘some’ is the name of your song.
If you can’t see the .m4a part (ie you only see ‘Dancing Queen’ and not ‘Dancing Queen.m4a’), it’s because Windows is set to hide extensions. Here’s how to show file extensions for editing.
Once you can see the m4a part, right-click on the file and choose Rename. Now change the extension from .m4a to .m4r and press return, press enter or click on some white space.
On a Mac, the process is very similar, and on both Windows and macOS, you’ll see a prompt asking if you’re sure you want to change the extension. Click Yes on Windows, and ‘Use .m4r’ on Mac.
Click Yes when you are asked if you want to change the extension.
Note: Since this is a step that takes a lot of people, please keep in mind that you can’t just add .m4r when renaming the file. If file extensions are hidden in Windows, you are just changing your file from ‘Dancing Queen.m4a’ to ‘Dancing Queen.m4rm.m4a’.
It will not work!
Import And Sync Ringtones
Apple cut the bloat out of iTunes in version 12.7, removing many other things including the App Store and Tones, where you could easily see all your ringtones.
However, you can still sync your new ringtones to your iPhone in the latest version of iTunes.
To do this, connect your phone to your computer with its USB cable. If using Windows 10, tap on ‘Trust this Computer’ when it pops up on your iPhone screen. If this message doesn’t appear, you may need to unplug and re-plug the USB cable, unless you’ve done this step before. Enter your phone’s passcode as part of the ‘trust’ process and wait until your phone icon appears in iTunes. Sometimes it may take a few minutes.
You may see a message in iTunes asking ‘Do you want to allow this computer to access the information on “Xxxx’s iPhone”?’ So click on the continue button to allow this access.
Look for your phone in the left-hand column under Devices. Click on that and the list should expand so that you can see a Tone section. Click on that and you’ll see any custom tones appear on the right (if you don’t have any, that list will be empty).
Switch to your File Explorer window — or Finder on a Mac — where your ringtone should still be highlighted (or see the Find the File step earlier). If it is not selected, click on it to do so.
To copy the file, press Ctrl+C on your keyboard or Command+C on a Mac.
Go back to iTunes, click Tones if this section isn’t already selected, and press Ctrl+V (Command+V on Mac) to paste the tone.
What should happen is that the tone will appear in the list of tones and automatically sync to your iPhone within a few seconds.
Note: You can no longer drag and drop tones from an Explorer window into iTunes.
Mac users: Sometimes ringtones just won’t show up in the Tones section. Here are two things to try:
1- Delete the ringtone ‘Song’ entry in your iTunes music library (don’t delete the actual file on your hard drive – choose to keep it when prompted). Then double-click the .m4r file in Finder and it should show up in Tone.
2- If that doesn’t work, try moving the .m4r file to a location outside of your iTunes folder on your hard drive (eg on the desktop). Then double click on it.
Delete Ringtone From Library
More Housekeeping!
You don’t need to delete the new AAC version of the song you just created from your iTunes music library, but you should.
This is because if you create too many ringtones it becomes a mess. It’s also confusing to have a single-track album that won’t play (because you changed the extension) and doesn’t have the full song anyway.
Set Your New Ringtone
Now that you have the new tone on your phone, all you have to do is set it as your ringtone.
To do this, open the Settings app on your iPhone, then tap Sounds (also known as Sounds & Haptics), then tap Ringtone.
Your custom tones will appear at the top of the list, above the default ringtone. Just tap on one to make it your ringtone.
The fun doesn’t stop there, as you can use your custom tone for other things like text message alerts – or anything else…
Custom Alert Tone
If you want a custom tone for text messages, tweets, Facebook posts, new voicemails, reminder alerts, or anything else, it’s exactly the same process as for ringtones.
The only difference is that you need to select the appropriate section under ‘Sounds & Haptics’ on your iPhone.
Just tap on the type you want, for example text tone, and you will see the alert tone list.
Scroll down to these, and you’ll see your Ringtones list. Your custom tones will again be at the top of this section.
However, using a 30-second song as a text message alert is not a good idea. And, in case you’re wondering, there’s no distinction between a ‘song’ and a sound effect in iTunes, so you don’t need to use a song part of your music library as your custom alert tone.
All you need is a sound effect in a format that iTunes can import (usually MP3), and it will be treated just like any other song. Then, repeat the same process for the ringtone as for creating and syncing the sound effect to your iPhone, then select it as we’ve shown.
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