It took a while to figure out, because why would an almost €1000 phone have an intuitive way to get custom ringtones on it? I remember from 10 or so years ago that there was a Tones tab in iTunes for this, but Apple rather has you buy ringtones in their silly Tones Store it seems.
I took a look at it and it’s full of dumb ringtones I don’t care for nor want to pay for. So here is how to get custom ringtones and alert sounds onto your iPhone for free!
I did this on macOS Sequoia but reportedly it works on macOS Catalina and newer. I found these steps buried in a topic on the Apple Forums.
I’ve tried this via Wifi sync, but that doesn’t seem to work and the files MUST be in Apple’s m4a format, but renamed to m4r. The r stands for ringtone, whereas a is a regular song, like you’d have in iTunes.
Prepare a song or audio file to be a ringtone
Prepare your sound files, convert them to m4a. This can be any file of 30 seconds long or shorter. I cut bits out of songs that I like, the intro for a soundtrack for example. And a piece of music that suits alarm clocks.
I used the trim feature in Quicktime Player for this. But you can use whatever program you like instead. Audacity for example, or Garageband should work too.
From Quicktime I exported the file as Audio Only which got me a .m4a file. I converted that to .mp3 to get rid of any meta data, copyright and other nonsense, and converted it back to m4a.
Finally I renamed the newly created .m4a file to have the .m4r extension.
Yes, convoluted and stupid. I know!
Copying custom ringtones onto your iPhone:
- Connect your iPhone to your MacBook using a USB cable.
- Make sure the file you’re going to copy has the .m4r extension, nothing else works.
- Open Finder and click on your iPhone in the sidebar.
- Make sure the phone is unlocked and trusts the computer, there may be a prompt to trust the computer.
- Then, access the General tab.
- Drag and drop the .m4r file anywhere into the General tab area.
This will automatically transfer the ringtone to your iPhone. The sync bar at the bottom will briefly show activity, indicating the file is being copied. Once that turns to normal again, the ringtone should be visible in your iPhone’s settings -> Sounds & Haptics -> Ringtone, and in the Clock app in the alerts sounds menu.