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REMEMBER WHEN RINGTONES were all the rage a few years ago? It was a simpler time when we had Nokia 3210s and used phones the size of a brick. But as phones became smarter, custom ringtones were replaced by more generic ringtones and sounds.
However, it’s now easier than ever to relive some of the glory and bring custom ringtones to your smartphone. Here’s how.
iPhone
The least straightforward of the three. Before you start, you will need the latest version of iTunes and the song/music of choice saved on it.
A ringtone can be as long as 30 seconds so make sure the section you’re picking for your ringtone doesn’t get annoying after a few rings. Once you’ve that decided, it’s a case of creating that file.
First, right-click the song on iTunes and select ‘get info’.
Then in the options tab, enter the start and stop time of the clip you want (remembering that it should be less than 30 seconds) and press ok.
Now right-click the song again and click on ‘Create ACC version.’A new shortened version of the song will appear.
Drag this file and save it on your desktop or folder (Anywhere where you can easily find it) and rename the file extension from m4a to m4r.
(If you’re using Windows and you can’t do this, it’s because it’s hiding the file extension name. If you go to Start > Control Panel > Appearances and Personalisation > Folder Options and click the view tab, you will see an option to untick a box for ‘hide extensions for known file types’.)
Now connect your iPhone to your computer, but before you add the ringtone to iTunes, check to see if the tones option is available first. If it’s not, you will need to go into File (iTunes if you’re using a Mac) > Preferences and under the general tab, select tones. Close and then restart iTunes.
Now drag the ringtone from wherever you saved it onto iTunes and it will save under Tones. Go into your iPhone settings, select Tones > Sync all and click apply. That’s the hard part out of the way.
Now it’s a matter of selecting it as your ringtone. Go into settings > Sounds > Ringtone and lo and behold, your new ringtone is there for you to select.
Android
For Android, the process is more straightforward since you can simply download an app to get the job done.
One of the more popular examples out there is Ringdroid which, while looking rather dated now, allows you to create ringtones from existing music files on your phone.
It also allows you to assign custom ringtones to specific contacts should you want to mix it up a bit.
Windows Phone
Another easy way of adding new ringtones, although you will need your computer to fully complete this. First, you must download Zune (if you haven’t already) before you can do anything.
It’s a matter of editing the file in Zune, (clicking edit and choosing/typing ringtone in ‘Genre’) and syncing the file to your phone. After that, go into settings and then into Ringtones + sounds and find the new file you added.
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My battery wouldn’t last long enough for me to do that…
Laughable how difficult it is to do on an iPhone. Sure just getting music on it in the first place is a trial in itself with all the iTunes and syncing shite. Android is just drag and drop
If you’ve a Mac, you can just edit the song in GarageBand, and import as ringtone to iTunes, sync with iPhone, and you’re done.
Since when is this a thing? I’ve had various phones over the past 15 years, always had a custom ringtone and never had a problem setting it (actually, I tell a lie, I had one for an afternoon that I returned when I discovered it couldn’t do it easily).
Certainly, the article seems to be making things more complicated than they need to be for Androids. On my current phone, you don’t need to download any apps or anything like that. Just two steps:
(i) Save your desired MP3 (any length you like) to the “Sounds” folder on the phone.
(ii) Go — Settings>Sounds>Set Ringtone>Add and pick your MP3,
Simples.
You can even, just as easily, set your clock alarm to whatever MP3 you want. And you ‘notification’ tone (for emails, facebook updates etc) The only thing that’s tricky is setting things like the startup sound and camera shutter sound, but that those can be done with downloaded apps and a few steps.
or get the free ringtones app that lets you create them on your iphone from your music library, email them to yourself, open on your PC with itunes, sync iphone to PC, hey presto ring tone is on your iphone
I was about to say that
The windows phone is crap, my mother in law got a free one (no wonder they were giving them away) and I was tasked with setting it up, an afternoon spent battling the phone, its too complicated I use Linux on the laptop and spend all day using drive and gmai on both the desktop ann the phone for work and give me android any day its intuitive and logical,
Ah but how do I apply different ringtones to different contacts on iPhone?
That’s easy you just do that when you are editing a particular persons contact details.
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