You may have noticed that in one of my RSS feeds this week came an article from lifehacker showing you how to use Garageband to create ringtones for your iPhone. However, if you use a PC running Windows, you do not have this option. Well, it’s your lucky day, you can create ringtones just using iTunes, heres how.
Select, duplicate and convert the track
First find a track that you like in your iTunes library and duplicate it. Now convert that track to AAC by selecting the duplicated track, right clicking (windows), or CTRL/click (Mac) and select convert to AAC.
Please Note: make sure you have a back up of the track you are using just in case you make a mistake!
Edit the start and stop times
Ringtones have to be 40 seconds in length, so go to File > Get Info > Options. In the start time box enter the start time you would like the track to start playing. Then in the stop time box below, enter the stop time. Remember, the total duration has to be 40 seconds and no more.
Check the two boxes next to these fields and then check Remember Playback Position. Now you have your track.
Convert the file extension
We need to convert this to a ringtone and the way to do that is to first delete the track from iTunes. Do not send to the recycle bin or the trash, instead keep the file (use finder to locate it on a mac). Once located, we need to re-name the file with the extension m4r this will tell iTunes that it is a ringtone.
Double click the file to open it in iTunes, then double click once more and it should pop into your iTunes folder. Double check this by clicking on ‘Ringtones’ in the left hand column of your iTunes interface.
And there we have it, a custom ringtone for your iphone without using garageband.
Enjoy!
