Making Free iPhone Ringtones in 10 Easy Steps

Some time ago, I had posted a link on my Facebook page that showed how to create free ring tones for your iPhone using your existing mp3's in iTunes.

What Apple wants you to do is to buy the ring tone version of a song separately, even if you already purchased the corresponding mp3 from iTunes.

Here's a way to get around this:

**Please note that this only works with mp3, ACC and AIFF files and that they must be DRM-free (meaning that you can't use mp3's that you downloaded from iTunes)**

Step 1:   Open iTunes and check your Import settings by clicking on Edit --> Preferences. Then click on the Import Settings button under the General tab. Make sure that you are set to either AAC Encoder or Apple Lossless.

Step 2:  Select the song that you would like to turn into a ring tone. Play the song and write down the start and end time of the part of the song that you would like to set your ring tone to be. (Make sure that your ring tone is 40 seconds or less).  After you have done this, right-click on the song and select Get Info.

Step 3: Under the Options tab, click both the Start Time and End Time boxes. Enter in the start and end times of the song that you want for your ring tone. Then click OK.

Step 4: (Make sure that your song is still highlighted). Click on Advanced in the menu bar.

Step 5:  Select Create AAC Version or Create Apple Lossless Version.  This will create a copy of your song. (You may need to use the search feature to locate both titles). The new version of the song will have a shorter playing time.

 

Step 6:  Go back to the original version of the song and uncheck the Start Time and End Time boxes.

Step 7: Highlight the duplicate song and drag it to your desktop. Once the file is on your desktop, you must delete it from iTunes completely or else it won't allow you to import the new ring tone file.

Step 8: On your desktop, rename the file so that it has an .m4r extension. This turns your song file into an iPhone ringtone file.

Step 9: Drag your newly created .m4r file back into your iTunes library. (In the upper left corner of iTunes). You should now see your .m4r file in Ringtones under your Library.

Step 10: Sync to your iPhone and you're all done! :o)