howto: make your own iphone ringtone

why should you be required to buy a song twice to get a ringtone on your iphone? you shouldn’t. since we agree, let’s continue.

this is pushing me dangerously close to spewing out my guts about how i feel concerning the apple vs microsoft debate, but i’ll save that for another time. the good stuff that we can render from that debate are all the workarounds that smart people develop to ‘beat the system’ so to speak. i’m not one of those smart people, but i am blessed with the ability to decipher their language (sometimes) and pass on the love. to make it work, you’ll be converting an existing song like an .mp3 to apple’s song format: the AAC aka “m4a”. once the mp3 is converted using itunes, simply rename the file extension to .m4r, to trick itunes into thinking it’s a ringtone file. the 10 step process below will walk you through the process of obtaining as many ringtones on your iphone as your heart desires.

1. use itunes and choose a song from your eclectic library of music
   
2. press ‘get info’ on the song by right clicking on the file first
   
3. ringtones only work if they are shorter than 40 seconds (so i’m told), so you’ll need to pick a new start and stop time for the song
4. ensure that in your import settings (itunes>prefs), you are importing using the AAC encoder
5. select the song and now nav to “advanced > create AAC version”
6. you just created a new file that needs to be verified using the finder (hint: it will end in extension “.m4a”)
7. after checking the file was made successfully, go back to itunes and delete the .m4a file it added automatically (make sure to ‘keep’ the original file if prompted)
8. back to the finder window, rename the .m4a file to end in the extension “.m4r” (example: bananaphone.m4a becomes bananaphone.m4r, a fine ringtone choice i might add)
9. double click the .m4r file you just renamed, and you will see/hear it in itunes
10. itunes was just tricked and now thinks it’s a ringtone, you may now use itunes to sync it to your iphone

the ten step process gets quicker with each go, because you just can’t have one (ringtone). to note: there is nothing illegal with this procedure, apple has just made it a pain in the ass to have what you want… what’s new?