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iOS 26 Lets You Set Custom Ringtones Without Using GarageBand

zorinlynx said:
Yeah. That's one thing that people who switched from Android complain about a lot. "What do you mean I have to do all this nonsense to set a ringtone?!"

And I completely nod my head in agreement; Apple either didn't realize people wanted this, or had some reason to prevent it.

Now we can finally put this idiocy to bed.
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It's always about the money. In this case, it's not Apple being greedy but maybe RIAA or carrier licensing agreements.

Pre-iPhone feature phones, especially the carrier-locked versions in the US, often lock down setting any arbitrary audio files as ringtones.
 
TheMountainLife said:
Depends on your lifestyle I guess. If you have no kids, spouse, elder parents or work/customers/coworkers that may spontaneously call then the silent life is for you.
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I have all those things and still keep my phone on silent all the time. I have an Apple Watch and am rarely more than an arms length away from my iPhone though.
 
cgs1xx said:
And how exactly do you trim audio files in the Files app? 😳
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You used to be able to trim them with Quicktime, but I don't think you can anymore. Audacity is free and a great audio editor.

I've had custom ring and text tones for over a decade, but they have always been sounds..never music.
 
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cgs1xx said:
And how exactly do you trim audio files in the Files app? 😳
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In the Files app? You can't. But perhaps you have an audio editing app that can manipulate something in your iCloud file storage.

WarmWinterHat said:
You used to be able to trim them with Quicktime, but I don't think you can anymore. Audacity is free and a great audio editor.
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As I wrote above, if you are making a ringtone from a file in your Music (or previously, iTunes) library, you just set start/end points in the track's info and then do a "Convert to AAC" from the menu bar. It will create a new track containing the trimmed audio.

If your audio isn't in Music, then yes, Audacity is a good choice.
 
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shamino said:
In the Files app? You can't. But perhaps you have an audio editing app that can manipulate something in your iCloud file storage.



As I wrote above, if you are making a ringtone from a file in your Music (or previously, iTunes) library, you just set start/end points in the track's info and then do a "Convert to AAC" from the menu bar. It will create a new track containing the trimmed audio.

If your audio isn't in Music, then yes, Audacity is a good choice.
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Ah, I never used iTunes to make a ringtone, just to sync them. Makes sense.
 
Lol, I never knew I could do it with garage band, I always tried to use apps to turn Spotify into alarms. I now get to download an mp3, open with imovie (the only editer that my phone will let me use) use a .mov to .mp3 converter, press share, and finally add to ringtone.
 
dcingie said:
Anyone know how to shorten the length of an mp3??
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Lots of different ways. Any good audio editor (e.g. Audacity) can do it.

If the track is in your Music/iTunes library, you can open the track's info and set start/end timestamps. The app (and any iDevices you sync with the library) won't play anything outside of those times. If you want to actually make the file shorter, you can select the track an do a "Convert to AAC" (or to any other format, as determined by your import settings) to create a new track containing the trimmed region.

There are also third-party apps designed for lossless trimming (that is, will trim the file without re-encoding the audio). A web search finds many such apps, but not all are for macOS. Since I haven't used any of them, I won't recommend any.
 
Since switching to iPhone beginning with iPhone 6, I had to convert all ringtones to m4r format. And it's still that way even now.
 
I don't think i've had a ringtone set since maybe my old nokia days.

But i'm actually in awe that apple can't set a custom ringtone out of the box without a seperate app? Even if i have a mp3 or midi file on my phone? Surely this can't be true.
 
Got to break out my archive of ringtones from 2009 that I made for the iPhone 3GS. Most are over 30 seconds and need trimming. The others work as expected. Back then I looked forward to phone calls.
 
Mousse said:
Now it makes so much sense why most iPhone user I know have their phone set to vibrate only, no ringing. It makes for finding a misplaced iPhone a pain in the (_!_) to find though.😤 I guess it gets dull hearing the same ringtone for every call.

I could never live with that. Every important contact has their own ringtone so I know who's calling.🤗 I have a standard ringtone for unknown callers so I know what to ignore.
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Same here. I know who is calling without taking my phone out of my pocket because everyone who matters has their own ringtone. That's especially important because I drive a commercial vehicle. I'm required to keep my phone out of sight at all times.

I appreciate getting a more convenient way to add ringtones in iOS 26, but why do we still have to go to the effort of duplicating and then editing songs down to 30 seconds or less?

Way back in 2012 whatever phone I had (might have been Android, might have been Windows Phone) was able to play any song in my library as a ringtone. The phone didn't care if it was 30 seconds or 10 minutes long.
 
frownface said:
But i'm actually in awe that apple can't set a custom ringtone out of the box without a seperate app? Even if i have a mp3 or midi file on my phone? Surely this can't be true.
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You don't need software to set a custom ringtone. Just open your phone in the Finder (or for old Macs, in iTunes) and drag/drop the file to it.

But it only supports one file format - an AAC audio file with an ".m4r" filename extension that is 30s or less. If your audio is in some other format, you will have to convert it first, and that's what software is needed for.

But this is nothing new. Older phones also had file-type requirements. Your old feature phone that used MIDI files couldn't load an MP3. And a phone that uses MP3 probably can't load a FLAC file. I think modern Android phones require Ogg/Vorbis files.
 
why would you ever need garage band? just take any m4a file and rename to m4r
 
ijordano said:
why would you ever need garage band? just take any m4a file and rename to m4r
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You still need to crop it down to 30s or less - which you can do from within Music/iTunes. But if you want to make any other edits/changes, then you'll need an audio editor. Garage Band is far from the only option, but it's the one that Apple pre-loads with macOS.
 
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