Install A Custom Ringtone on Your iPhone

with iOS 12 and iTunes

Overview

Edit music or audio to 40 seconds or less.Phone ringtones are usually only a few seconds long and then they repeat.
Apple limits all ringtone files to 40 seconds. Any ringtones longer than this limit will not sync to an iOS device using iTunes. When it comes to how long a ringtone will play when the iPhone is ringing, this time is shorter. For example, normal ringing on AT&T is limited to 20 seconds.
First Goal: Create an audio file in the AAC FormatTo install a ringtone file on an iPhone the audio will have to be in the AAC format and have the extension of .M4R
Final Goal: Install and configure your custom ringtone to play on your iPhone.Just follow the steps below to install a custom ringtone on your iPhone using either a Macintosh Computer or Windows computer.
Show More

From Garageband (MacOS)

Complete!

Congratulations you have completed all of the steps successfully! Enjoy your new ringtone! Can you figure out how to assign a different ringtone for each of your contacts?

Double Check Your Audio Project Length

Is your file less than 30 seconds?

Export File to Disk

Use either the File menu or the Share your song to disk.

For File Format, Choose AAC

In the Export Dialog Box, choose the AAC format and make sure you notice where you are saving it on the hard drive.
In this example the file is being saved into the Garageband Folder.

Change the Extension

Find your ringtone in the folder that you saved it to on your hard drive. The last three letters to the right of the "." are called an extension.

Generally speaking we do not want to change an extension. For instance changing a ".pdf" to a ".docx" (or Microsoft Word Document) will not work, and you may not be able to open the file.

This time we will change the extension from .m4a to .m4r

You will get a confirmation dialog box on the next step:

⬇︎ respond to permission request ⬇︎

We do want to Use .m4r

Connect Your iPhone to Your Computer

Use the USB to Lightning Cable to connect your phone to a computer with iTunes installed.

This should launch iTunes automatically. If this phone has never been connected to this Macintosh, you will probably get a dialog box asking if you trust this device. You may have to confirm or type in a code.

Select Your Phone in iTunes

Once you have given the computer permission to access the phone, you should see a little phone icon in the top left of iTunes.

Drag Your Ringtone on to the iTunes Sidebar

Take your custom ringtone from the Finder window and drag it on to the area below your phone that says: On My Device.

Drop it!

Now Go to Settings On Your iPhone

Select the choice Sounds & Haptics in settings

Select Your Ringtone!

Slide open the Ringtone panel by touching that bar.

Woot! There it is!

You should find your new custom ringtone at the top of all the provided ringtones.