custom iphone ringtones

You don’t have to pay for your songs twice to get a ringtone. There are many songs in your music library, but no way to make ringtones from any of them. Actually, with a little bit of trickery (nothing illegal) you can create ringtones from any of your non-DRM songs in your iTunes library easily, and for free. This works on both Mac and Windows PCs.

1. Open iTunes
2. Find the song that you want to make into a ringtone.
3. Listen to the song and find the part of it you want to use. The chorus may be a good place to start.
4. Write down the start and stop times of the clip.
5. Right-click the song and select “Get Info.”
6. Click the “Options” tab.
7. Type in the start time of your ringtone in the text box next to “Start Time” in the minutes:seconds (i.e. 2:01) format.
8. Type in the end time of your ringtone in the text box next to “Stop Time.” Make sure the ringtone is no more than 40 seconds long.
9. Click “OK”.
10. Right-click your song again and select “Convert Selection to AAC”. Wait for iTunes to convert your song. It will create a duplicate version.
11. Right-click the ringtone and select “Delete”.
12. Click on the “Keep Files” button.
13. Find the file. It’s usually in your User folder under Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and under the band’s name. It will have an extension of “m4a.”
14. Replace the “m4a” extension of your ringtone with “m4r”. You can either double-click slowly to re-name your file, or right-click and select “Get Info” on a Mac or “Rename” on a Windows PC.
15. Click “Use .m4r” or the PC equivalent when the system warns you that the change may affect the use of your file.
16. Double-click the ringtone file. ITunes will automatically add it to your ringtones folder in your iTunes Music Library.

17. Connect your iPhone and sync your ringtones.

Warnings

a. For everyone having problems syncing the ringtones to your iPhone: Find the ringtone in your Ringtones folder and change the extension back to .M4A & attempt to sync again.

b. Instead of deleting it, you can also drag the newly converted ringtone to your desktop from iTunes and follow the rest of the steps.

c. There may be some problems with the latest version of Leopard – renaming the file may not work properly, and you won’t be able to add it to the ringtones folder.

d. This will not work with songs bought at the iTunes store or that has DRM (copy-protection). Your best bet is to use a song that you have imported from a CD.

Tips:

1. For those of you using a PC who can not see the file extension m4a follow these instructions and you should be able to see it
1) Go to control panel
2) Double click the folder options icon
3) Click on the view tab
4) scroll down and uncheck the box “hide extensions for known file types
when you go back and view your converted song you should now see the file extension m4a this is what you need to change to m4r

2. The Import Settings dialog (go to Preferences -> General -> Import Settings…) controls the encoding method used by iTunes. Change it to AAC in the Import Settings dialog and the “Convert Selection to AAC” option will appear in the song’s context menu and in the Advanced menu.

3. pshaheen, there is right click functionality in Mac OS X. If you only have a one button mouse or a laptop trackpad, you can hold hold Control and then click which is the same thing as right click. This will allow you to access the menus you need.
Ctrl + Mouse Click = Right Click