iPhone Custom Ringtones Guide and Review

A few days ago Apple unleashed iPhone custom ringtone availability through iTunes — I blogged when they announced this last week, but before this week it had yet to be usable. This post is probably a few days later than it should be, however I was away on business without my Macbook and thus didn’t have iTunes and couldn’t sync my iPhone.

The iPhone custom ringtone process is fairly straightforward, and I’ve captured a number of screen shots to illustrate the process even more clearly. (NOTE: to follow along with this guide on your own you must have the latest version of iTunes — currently 7.4.1)

Upon plugging in your iPhone to sync with your computer you’ll notice that there is now a “Ringtones” tab.

Additionally, there is also a section for ringtones in the left-hand navigation menu.

When you first enter the iTunes Music Store you will notice a button dedicated to the new ringtones feature.

Clicking on that ringtones button will take you to a rintone informational page.

There is also a “Top Ringtones” section on the main iTunes Music Store page.

To make the process of finding a ringtone-capable song — remember to start there are only 500,000 — easy, I entered the top ringtones section and found one I wanted by Royksopp. (Notice the little ringtone symbol in the track listing, this symbol indicates that the given track can be used as a ringtone).

Once you’ve found your desired ringtone, click on the ringtone symbol and you will get the ringtones terms of service notification prompt and be forced to accept the TOS. I’m sure this is only a one-time process so don’t be alarmed.

Once you’ve accepted the ringtones TOS you can go in and create your ringtone. By default, the first 15 seconds of the track and queued up with the fade in and out selected and a 0.5 second gap between loops, but all of this can be changed. You can click the preview button to listen to what your ringtone will sound like and then finally you can purchase your ringtone.

Here is the default ringtone edit view for the Royksopp song I purchased:

And here is the same track after I switched around the section of the song I want and changed the looping interval:

Once you’ve finished modifying the ringtone to your liking just click the “Buy” button and voila! Or so I thought…

Turns out that there is a bug with creating ringtones from iTunes Plus (DRM-free) tracks, and I received the following error message:

So I decided to go with a different track until they work out the kink in their system. I went to my local music library and searched for any tracks with a ringtone symbol in their listing, which of course means that I would be able to use them as ringtones. I stumbled upon the Eagles classic “Hotel California” and decided to go with that one.

I went back into the ringtone editor and modified “Hotel California” to my liking.

After clicking “Buy” the ringtone appeared in the “Ringtones” section of my local music library.

Finally, I can navigate to the ringtones tab with my iPhone plugged in to the computer and sync the ringtone to my iPhone.

Once the syncing has completed the custom ringtone you’ve created will appear in the Settings > Sounds > Ringtone section of your iPhone along with all of your default ringtones and can be used just like any other ringtone.

UPDATE: 9/18/2007 – A new version of iTunes has been released — 7.4.2 — which fixes the iTunes Plus bug I mentioned above.