How to Put Ringtones on iPhone (.M4A)

Although there is no easy way to add customized ringtones, it is still possible with either laptops or desktops. This guide offers Appurse users with ways to add your own ringtones with and without iTunes. The content included thorough guides to set up ringtones for macOS Catalina users, macOS users with other versions and Windows users.

For macOS users with Catalina

1. Download your favorite ringtone from our website

2. Drag the M4A into Apple Music “Library” > Go to “Songs”

3. Right Click on your song > “Get Info”

4. “Options” > make a 30-second period in the “start” and “stop” boxes at your desired place

5. Click “OK” to save your changes

6. On the top left corner, find “File” > “Convert” > Create AAC Version

7. Drag your document to your desktop

8. Click “Show in Finder”

9. Right-click on the M4A document > “Rename”

10. Change the suffix from “.M4A” to “.M4R”

11. When prompted, choose “Use .m4r”

12. Connect your phone via USB cable > Click Finder

13. Find your phone under “Locations”

14. Click “Trust” on your iPhone and enter your passcode if asked to do so

15. Enable “Manually Manage Music, Movies, and TV Shows” under “General”

16. Drag the .M4R document from the desktop (if you have problems doing so, select the desired iPhone listed in “Devices” on the sidebar and then drag in the document)

17. If you have done everything, check it in “Settings” > “Sounds & Haptics” > “Ringtone” on your iPhone, it should be all set!

For macOS users with other versions

1. Pick a sound file: Your ringtone file must be within 40 seconds. Mp3cut.net will do the job perfectly

2. Click the “Open file” button and browse to the M4A or other types of sound file you want to edit. It can also extract the sound from video files if you upload them

3. Select the part of the audio you want to use and click the “Save” button

4. Download the trimmed clip to your PC

5. Drag and drop the file directly into the iTunes library. Click “Library” > “Songs”

6. Select the sound file in iTunes and click on the top left corner “File” > “Convert” > “Create AAC Version”

7. Two copies of the same song in your Music library will be shown: The original M4A version and the new AAC version

8. Open the “Songs”, right-click the headings and enable the “Kind” column

9. You now have your ringtone file as an AAC file

10. Drag and drop the AAC file from the iTunes library to your Desktop or any other folder on your laptop or desktop

11. Change the file extension from “.m4a” to “.m4r”

12. Connect your iPhone to your PC or Mac with its included USB

13. Click “Trust” and enter Passcode if prompted

14. In iTunes, click the icon that appears to the left of the “Library”

15. Click the “Tones” section under “On My Device”

16. Drag and drop the .m4a ringtone file from its folder to the Tones section in iTunes

17. iTunes will sync the ringtone to your phone and it will immediately appear under Tones here

18. If you have done everything, check in the “Settings” > “Sounds & Haptics” > “Ringtone” on your iPhone, it should be all set!

For Windows users

1. Launch iTunes and choose the song you want to turn into ringtones, alerts or text tones. Click it and then press “Get Info” to go on

2. Now you’ll see a pop-up iTunes window, click “Option” on the upper of the window. You are allowed to set the volume, media kind, start, and stop time. An alarm ringtone can be of maximum of 30 seconds. You can also make it shorter according to your needs. After that, click “OK”

Note: You can start from any part of the song; it doesn’t need to be from the beginning

3. Right-click on the song again and click “Create AAC Version”, there will be a copy in your Music library. Now you can listen to the AAC version to check if it is correct or not

4. Choose the copy and right-click it and then select “Show in Windows Explorer”, a pop-out window will ask you to rename the newly created file. Click ‘Yes” to rename it and change the format into .m4a

5. Go to File, Add File to Library in Music. Find the files you just created and add them to the library

6. Then there will be a Tones folder under the library. Connect iPhone to the computer and sync it with Music

7. Go to “Settings” on iPhone, tap “Sounds, Ringtone” to find the custom ring you just added. Click the song to make a custom ringtone on iPhone successfully