Skip to Content

Create your own iTunes-compatible ringtones

by Erica Sadun Sep 7th 2007 at 11:00AM

Update 12am 9/8: It appears that iTunes 7.4.1 blocks the transfer of these homemade ringtones. If you haven't updated yet, you may want to load up on song snippets first...

iTunes 7.4 makes it especially easy to add and sync ringtones with your iPhone--without having to pay for a third-party installer. TUAW reader Arnold Kim passed along a link to this fabulous MacRumors post with a method attributed to "Cleverboy" and Nicholas "Drudge" Penree sent me additional instructions.

It goes basically like this: iTunes uses the m4r file extension for Ringtones. If you copy an AAC file from your library and rename it from .m4a to .m4r and then add it back to iTunes, the program reads it back in as a ringtone rather than a normal library track. You can then sync it to your iPhone. I've tested this with both an MP3 that I converted to AAC and with a track I purchased from the iTunes store. They both worked.

The secret lies in making sure the name change happens properly. This isn't a big problem on Windows. On the Mac though there are protections in place to keep you from renaming the file extension--this isn't to keep you from making ringtones. It's to keep you from hurting your files. So either do the rename in Terminal or select the file you want to rename and open the Info window. Scroll down to the Name & Extension field and change the extension to m4r there.

At this time, the m4r items do not appear in your Library. You can only see them when you select an iPhone in the sources list and then click on the Ringtones tab.

In other news, the download-free-iTunes-previews trick seems to be dead until further notice.

Further notice: Okay, I got the preview trick fixed but it's..trickier. You've got to download the iTunes pages as if they were webpages and then extract the URLs from the page source. I'll write this up if there's any interest. Let me know in the comments

Update: Use this technique only for tracks you've copied from your personal CD collection.



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

iTS Hacks How-tos iTunes iPhone

Update 12am 9/8: It appears that iTunes 7.4.1 blocks the transfer of these homemade ringtones. If you haven't updated yet, you may want to...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

51 Comments

Filter by:
DMMartin

I too am interested in getting the download-free-iTunes-previews trick working again. Otherwise, I guess I will just have to keep my old version of iTunes on my other machine. Suggestions?

September 10 2007 at 11:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
L2

...(sigh)...NONE of this works in Vista.

September 08 2007 at 1:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
steve campbel

i use www.create-ringtone.com to make and send custom ringtones, wallpapers, MP3's and Videos for FREE to cell phones around the world

September 08 2007 at 8:20 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
steve campbel

i use www.create-ringtone.com to make and send custom ringtones, wallpapers, MP3's and Videos for FREE to cell phones around the world

September 08 2007 at 8:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ericvicenti

"TUAW reader Arnold Kim passed along a link to this fabulous MacRumors post"

Wow. Normally I get really bugged by people flaming Erica for absolutely no reason at all, but this is different. You do know that "TUAW reader Arnold Kim" is in fact arn, the guy who started and runs MacRumors, right? "this fabulous MacRumors post" was actually HIS fabulous MacRumors post. Thanks.

September 08 2007 at 12:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kahlo

Anyone try deleting a ringtone from iTunes once they have imported it?

September 07 2007 at 10:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nicole

Wanted to throw in my 2cents. It works for me. The key is that you have to use songs that you didn't purchase via iTunes. Otherwise what I did was:

1. import mp3 to iTunes
2. convert to AAC
3. close iTunes and unplug phone
4. change file extension
5. doubleclick new file (m4r)
6. plug in phone
7. files are synched to iPhone


I am so glad someone figured this out. Now if someone can find a way to delete the ringtone from the ringtones tab that would be great. Like soemone mentioned earlier, if you delete the ringtone file itself, it will still remain on iTunes within the ringtone tab and there's no way to remove it (that I know of).

September 07 2007 at 6:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dave

I seem to only be able to sync 4 or 5 created ringtones at a time. At the moment one of my ringtones duplicated itself in the sounds list. Anyone able to create 10 or more ringtones?

September 07 2007 at 5:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jonathan ober

to any who care and re-read postings...yeah I make $20/hr, and to the guy who did the math...thanks for the new perspective as I start the new job and hopefully...it takes off. I work from home, and today when I was reading over TUAW, I couldn't bill a client that time. Sure I could have been a jerk and found someplace to put that fifteen minutes, but I don't work like that. Anyways, the whole ring tone thing does stink, but you know, they were going to get our money somehow. Maybe I will use the $100 online store credit to buy some Apple stuff, hopefully it won't go down in price a month after I get it though...

September 07 2007 at 5:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bryan thompson

I couldn't get them to work until I completely changed the file name... so test.m4a and test.m4r didn't work, but test.m4a to test1.m4r would work.

Also, I wrote a super quick thing for building text-to-speech ring tones: http://www.bryanthompson.us/2007/09/07/create-itunes-ringtones-from-text-to-speech-engine/
It's super simple, but I needed an excuse to post something on my blog. :p

September 07 2007 at 5:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.