Dare to Share

There’s already a nice selection of ringtones on the iPhone but if you’d like to create your own or already have another one then read on and I’ll show you how to get it on your iPhone easily and for free!Here’s a step-by-step guide of what to do:

1. In iTunes select a song that you want as your ringtone.
2. Get Info by clicking “Apple+i” or right-click and selecting the same option
3. Select Options and choose the section of the track you’d like to use in the Start and Stop Time (note: this can only be 40 seconds in length). So for the first 5 seconds select Start Time: 0:00 and Stop Time: 0:05
4. Click OK and Get Info again to see if your time selection is correct (I found that every now and again it got the time wrong so I just selected the section again, clicked OK and everything was okay)
5. With the song selected go to select Advanced > Create AAC Version (or right-click and do the same). This will create a new, cut down, version of the track.
6. Drag it from iTunes to your Desktop.
7. Change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r
8. Go back to iTunes and delete the version that already exists in your Library
9. Drag the version from your Desktop to the iTunes Library Heading (Left hand column). This will add your ringtone to the Ringtone section in your Library (If no Ringtone section is visible then go to iTunes > Preferences and make sure the Ringtones checkbox is ticked).
10. Connect your iPhone and select Ringtones, from the tab, and choose Sync Ringtones > All ringtones and click Sync. Once synced you’ll then be able to select this as your new ringtone by going to Settings > Sounds > Ringtone on your iPhone where it will appear under the Custom heading.

If you already have a ringtone that you’d like to use (this’ll usually be in mp3 format) then copy that from your Desktop to the iTunes Library Heading (Left hand column) in iTunes and then continue from Step 5

Unfortunately you can’t change the sounds for receiving Text Messages of any of the other alerts using this method. I am told that you can if you jailbreak your iPhone, which I’m yet to do so cannot comment on.