Tip Tuesday: Make your Own ringtone for your Iphone!!

Okay, so I finally wore DH down and convinced him to let me get an iphone!! SOO excited. I already had an ipod touch for a couple years and absolutely loved it, but I just wished it was my phone also. Well, in recent years, DH has become a stickler about purchasing ringtones. He thinks it's a "rip" to pay the money for them and then you have to repurchase the tones if you get a new phone. SO, I thought I'd attempt to see if I could create my own. I mean, it IS an ipod after all, so you'd think you could create a ringtone with your own music somehow. WELL, YES YOU CAN! Sorry if I'm shouting...I'm a bit excited..ha...

So, what I did was go to THIS SITE and followed the directions. However, I ran into a couple glitches and had to read ALL the comments until I figured it out. Hope this helps!

1. First, open Itunes.

2. Locate the song you wish to create a ringtone with and play it. Write down the start and stop times of the section you wish to use. Be careful to stay under 30 seconds. (I did Bruno Mars Lazy Song at start 0:49.5 Stop 1:11.8)

3. Right click on the song and click Get Info

4. Go to the Options tab and click on the Start box and enter the start time you noted. Do the same with the Stop box. Click OK

5. Right click on the song again and Click Create AAC version

6. After it's created right click on the short version and click Show in Windows Explorer

7. Now you need to Rename the file to a shortened name and change the .m4a extension to say .m4r. Here's where I had a hangup. I couldn't change the extension. If you can’t change the ext. Go to Control Panel, Appearance and Personalization, Click Folder Options,Click the View tab, , uncheck “Hide extension…”. Click OK.

8. Drag file to desktop.

9. Delete the file from the playlist. (If it asks, keep file, do not move to trash.)

10.  Double-click the file which will now open in iTunes. Check your Tones folder, the file should be there.

11. Now plug your iphone into your computer. When your phone is recognized. Click on it in the left sidebar so that you can see all of it's info. At the top, you should see a few different tabs. Click on the Tones tab. Make sure Sync Tones is checked and then All tones should be marked.

12. Sync your phone and it should show up in your ringtones.

It says you can't create tones with songs downloaded from itune but can only use those ripped from a cd. Not true. I was able to following these directions :)
This ROCKS! Hope it helps you!