iPhone 5 Portable Genius

Creating a Custom Ringtone

Your iPhone comes stocked with 25 predefined ringtones. Although some of them are amazingly annoying, you ought to be able to find one you can live with. If you can’t, or if you crave something unique, you can create a custom ringtone and use that.

In earlier versions of iTunes, the easiest way to cobble together a custom ringtone was to convert a song you purchased through the iTunes Store. Unfortunately, that feature was removed in iTunes 10. You can always purchase ringtones in the iTunes Store, but there are still a couple of techniques you can use to create a custom (and free!) ringtone, as the next couple of sections show.

Using iTunes to create a custom ringtone

The old Create Ringtone command may be gone from iTunes 10, but that application still comes with features that enable you to create a custom ringtone. Here’s how it works:

1. In iTunes, play the track you want to use. While the track is playing, watch the playback time and note the start time and end time of the portion of the track you want to use as your ringtone.

Ringtones can be a maximum of 30 seconds long, so select a portion of the track that is no longer than 30 seconds.

2. Choose File → Get Info, or press ⌘+I. The track’s Info dialog appears.

3. Click the Options tab.

4. Use the Start Time and Stop Time text boxes to type the starting and ending points for your ringtone ...