How-To: Create iPhone Ringtones in Garageband
If you own an iPhone and a Mac you can easily create ringtones within Garageband. I love music, but am not a music maker, so I don’t really use Garageband at all. Luckily, you don’t have to know much of anything about the program to easily create ringtones for your iPhone. Trust me. If I can do it, so can you, and I’ll show you how now.
Prerequisites
Before proceeding, make sure the following are true:
- You have the latest version of iTunes (from iLife ‘08) and it is currently patched. If you bought your Mac after about August of 2007 and keep your software up to date, then you’ll qualify. If you don’t have Garageband, check out this method for creating ringtones.
- You must use music that is not inhibited by DRM. If you have iTunes Plus music from iTunes, or MP3 files from Amazon.com or eMusic.com, or of course any files you’ve ripped from your own CDs, these all qualify.
OK, with those out of the way let’s make a ringtone…
1. Launch Garageband
If you’ve never run Garageband before, tell it you want to make a new file and just take all the defaults for that file (you don’t really use them for the ringtone anyway).
Once opened, the screen will look like the picture below. Don’t worry about the Grand Piano there, you don’t need to do anything with it.
2. Add a song
Click the Media button in the lower-right corner.
You’ll get a slide out window with which to navigate your entire iTunes library. Just find the song you want and drag it to the main GB window. Below you can see I chose the song Take Your Medicine.
Now that the song is in place, you can click the Media button again to hide it so you have more room to work.
3. Select a song section
First, click the Cycle Region button to turn on the cycle feature.
You will see the yellow cycle region at the very top of the screen. (The region you create is what will become the ringtone).
Now comes the fun part. Just drag the beginning and ending points of the cycle region to correspond to where you want the ringtone to begin and end. Hit the space bar and it will repeatedly play from the start of the region to the end. Continue adjusting the start/end points until you have the sound you want. Below you can see I’ve chosen a short section from the very end of the song.
Keep in mind there is a maximum of 40 seconds that can be used for a ringtone. Most of the time you’ll pick a section that will sound good when it repeats (i.e., rings multiple times on your phone), so the 40-second limit will not be an issue. However, if you’re picking a large section and are concerned that you may be butting up against the limit, you can determine the length using the Time display by clicking the up arrow at the bottom of GB.
By default (above) the display shows Measures. But click the arrow once and the display shows Time.
With the time displayed, physically drag the play head to the beginning of the yellow cycle region, and then to the end, noting the time in each case. You can determine the duration from that.
4. Create the ringtone
This is the easiest part. Once you like the section you’ve defined, just select Send Ringtone to iTunes from the Share menu.
GB will do all the work, and even open iTunes and play your newly created masterpiece.
In iTunes, the ringtone will be named “My Song” and the artist/album will be listed as your user name; you’ll probably want to change those as you would any other iTunes song, as I’ve done here.
5. Sync your iPhone
That’s it! Once synced, you can use your new ringtone. Meanwhile, quit GB. It’ll ask if you want to save the file, say no because the file has served its purpose.
It’s easy. No, really.
While it may have taken a while to explain this, believe me it’s really very easy stuff. Do it once and you’ll have the hang of it, and want to create a boatload of ringtones.
Tweet This (10)
Darrell Etherington on October 30th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
The fact that you can do this is actually one of my favorite things about the iPhone. I’ve always had trouble setting custom ringtones on other phones without paying the ridiculous fees providers charge.
jadam on October 30th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
There is a great online way to do this too: audiko.net. Not sure about the legality of said site, but it is dead easy. Chances are, the ringtone you want has already been created there.
macon on November 7th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I agreed with you.Using Garageband is the best way to create ringtones..And that’s simply easy.
Tom Reestman on October 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Jadam,
No way they have Cloud Cult’s Take Your Medicine:
“Suck up, suck up, and take your medicine!”
It’s now my daughter’s ringtone, and it’s PERFECT. :-)
Bill Langton on October 30th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Looks like a slight error…you say :
“You have the latest version of iTunes (from iLife ‘08)”
I think, based on the context, you meant “Garageband”
Otherwise – great article! Keep up the good work…
Bill
Nicole B. on November 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 pm
thank you! I have been trying to figure out how to do this and your instructions were easy and clear and it took me all of 2 minutes to do it once I read the instructions! such a great feature on the iPhone and I can’t wait to make all my ringtones! thanks again. :)
Kim on November 20th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I have a problem that I cannot solve on my own.
Why is it that my iTunes library doesn’t appear in Garage Band? I see the major headers, but I can’t see anything I’ve downloaded to use for a ringtone?
Tom Longo on December 12th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Excellent instructions. Thanks a million. I really appreciate your good work here. It really is way easy.
Sarah on January 2nd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Tom you are a god!
Thank you so much.
Your instructions were clear and concise and I now have some proper tuuuunes for ringtones!
marisa marchini on January 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 am
my computer says that there is an error 11556, I cannot send the ringtone to i-tunes
macon on November 7th, 2009 at 2:26 am
are you using window? i have no idea with that..
but if you are with mac..i can help ya out with it..
Good luck
Griffin Salisbury on February 28th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Oh my God! Thanks so much, this is great. Does anyone know if it’s possible to assign different ringtones for different contacts?
Dawn @ My Home Sweet Home on March 3rd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
AWESOME! I have a new iPhone and was very frustrated at not having good ringtones or being able to convert them from the songs I have in iTunes. Thank you so much!
Kojo Djarbeng on March 26th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Yo thanx, u the man!!! It’s great and so simple to make i love it so much and it makes me appreciate my Mac even more lol… thanx Man!
Ted on April 10th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Everything worked until I tried to sync Ringtones & was told if I synced Ringtones all my songs videos would be wiped out.
GetAFreeIphone on April 23rd, 2009 at 4:00 am
awesome cheers
vtxrider on October 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Excellent … works great
LAURA on October 18th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Everything worked until the sync part. It doesn’t show up in my phone. It created a file in ringtones but when i sync the iphone it’s no under settings – custom.
Help! I tried turning it off and on again too.