Sunday 24 August 2008

Use iTunes to make iPhone ringtones in 5 steps


Thanks to a YouTube video from mattsiphone, I was able to tweak some of the steps to make it work on a Mac. This works for all songs NOT purchased through iTunes ie. ripped from CDs and downloaded from other sources.

1. Open iTunes. Go to Preferences and click on Advanced Importing. See Import Using? Click to select AAC Encoder, then click OK.

2. Select the song you want to make a ringtone. Now you can choose to make the entire song a ringtone, or select a part of it. Get Info on the song and click on Options. Use the Start Time and Stop Time to select the part of the song you want as a ringtone. I suggest that you listen to the song first and note the start and stop times, before entering it here. This will also create a much smaller file (between 200 to 300K). Click OK when done.

3. With the song still highlighted, go to Advanced in the menu above screen and select Convert Selection to AAC. If you didn't do Step 1, you'll see Convert Selection to XXX (XXX being whatever mode you have left selected for song conversion). A copy of the song will be made as it converts.

4. When done, go to your iTunes Folder in your hard drive and find the folder of that song. Use Finder, it's faster. The song will be a .m4a file. Drag it to your desktop. IMPORTANT: Highlight the extension and change it to .m4r (this is the extension for iPhone ringtones). A window will pop up asking if you want to use.m4r or remain as .m4a. Click Use .m4r.

5. Almost there... I suggest you create a folder iPhone Ringtones and put that in the same folder as your iTune songs. Now when you connect your iPhone to your Mac, go to Ringtones tab in iTunes, and select the iPhone Ringtones folder and click on Synch. Voila! Now you have the chosen song in your iPhone as a ringtone.

Enjoy!

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