Ringtones for Rookies: 11 Easy Steps to Getting all your Favorites onto your iPhone

Important

This guide is outdated and may not provide accurate information for current use cases. It is being retained as a recognition of the author's contribution, but it should be regarded as archived.

By Ken Downey, 28 August, 2012

Many of you have been wondering: what is the easiest way to get ringtones on my iPhone. Follow these steps, and all your favorites will be on your iPhone in no time.
Requirements: PC running Windows
App: Goldwave.

  1. Download Goldwave from www.goldwave.com and run it. Click file, then batch processing.
  2. In the folders tab, click add file or add folder, then add everything you want to convert. In the convert tab, click media foundations m4a, and set the attributes to mono since you can't hear them in stereo anyway. After all, they're ringtones.
  3. Click begin and go do the dishes, as Goldwave shuts down sometimes when you exit the window. this is a bug! After the files are all converted, click OK and exit Goldwave.
  4. Enter the command prompt, and change the directory to the desired location, e.g. ringtones, by typing cd\ringtones. Then type ren *.m4a *.m4r. This only takes a second.
  5. Once all the m4a files have been renamed, exit the command prompt and enter File Explorer.
  6. Go to the folder with your m4r ringtones and hit control-a to select all of them.
  7. Go to iTunes. Find the tree view, and hit t until it says tones. If there is no tones playlist, create it.
  8. Now press tab, which takes you to the playlist itself. Press control-v to paste the files into the list.
  9. Go to the tree view again and select your device. Then tab to the sync tones radio button and check it. Then, tab about six times until you find a check box that says sync tones. The button allows you to check the appropriate box.
  10. Plug in your iPhone, and in no time it'll be cluttered up with, if you're like me anyway, hundreds of useless ringtones and a few very good ones.
  11. If you don't like some of the tones, delete them from your tones list. They will automatically be deleted from your iPhone.

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The article on this page has generously been submitted by a member of the AppleVis community. As AppleVis is a community-powered website, we make no guarantee, either express or implied, of the accuracy or completeness of the information.

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