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How To Make A Custom Ringtone With Garageband

January 16, 2018

It used to be a lot easier to create custom ringtones out of your favourite song. The interface was conveniently located in iTunes and it was very easy to use.

However, in the latest version of iTunes, Apple made the interface much harder to access. It’s still possible, but it’s now quite cumbersome to do it.

There is a little used feature in Garageband (which comes on every Mac and iOS device) that allows you to easily make ringtones out of your favourite songs, and even create a custom ringtone out of funny sounds or basically anything else.

In this guide we’re going to show you how to change your ringtone the normal way, and then how to create new ringtones with Garageband.

How to Change Your Ringtone

Within the basic ringtone functions on your iPhone, there is already an option to download ringtones from iTunes, and to change your ringtone to one of the built-in, conventional tones.

Follow these steps to change your ringtone:

1. Open up the Settings app, and tap on the Sounds section.

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2. Here, you can select from a bunch of different pre-loaded ringtones. If you navigate to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a bunch more ringtones under ‘Classic’.

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3. At the top, you’ll see the Store sections. Tap on Tone Store to view the options on iTunes.

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4. Tap on Tones.

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5. Here you’ll find a ton of different ringtones organized into Featured Tones and Charts. You can typically find any song you would want a ringtone out of, and buy it for under $2.

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6. Back in the Sounds section, you can also tap Download All Purchased Tones. This will download any tone that you’ve ever bought with your Apple ID. The tone will then appear amongst all of the Apple tones.

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This is how you will download and purchase tones most of the time. Sometimes, users end up wanting a tone that the

Store simply doesn’t have; an uncommon song or even just a funny noise that you’ve found.

Or, you may want to write your own ringtone music and use that!

How to Make a Custom Ringtone on GarageBand

In order to make a completely customized ringtone, you’ll need to download GarageBand. The standard version of GarageBand is completely free for anyone with an Apple ID. Just go to the App Store and download it.

Once you’ve downloaded GarageBand, follow these steps:

1. Tap to open the GarageBand app.

2. In order to use the full editor, you need to go through a few steps. Tap on Smart Piano or Alchemy Synth.

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3. Now, tap the red Record button. Once you’re recording, play a few notes on the piano. Doesn’t matter what, you’ll be deleting it shortly. Tap on the Stop button when you’re done.

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4. Now, tap on the Tracks view button in the top left hand corner.

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5. Tap the loop button in the tap right hand corner.

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6. Navigate to ‘Music’ if you want to create a ringtone out of a song.

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7. Find the song you want, and tap and hold on it. This will create a draggable item.

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8. Drag the song file into its own track.

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9. Tap the old placeholder track you made, then tap Delete.

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10. When you tap on the audio file, it will show two edges; you can drag these around to select your favourite part of the song. Ringtones can only be 30 seconds long, so you must trim it accordingly.

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11. Once the song is the appropriate length, and you’re satisfied with it, you can export it to be a ringtone. Unfortunately, you can’t do this right from the editor. Tap on the My Songs button in the top left hand corner.

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12. Here, you’ll be able to see your song. Tap and hold on it, and you have a variety of options to choose from. Tap on Share.

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13. Now, tap on Ringtone.

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14. Name your ringtone whatever you want. Tap Done when you are satisfied.

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15. Tap on Export. Then, tap on Use Sounds As…

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16. You can immediately choose to set it as your standard ringtone (when someone calls you) your standard text tone (when you get a text message) or you can assign the ringtone to a contact. For this example, we’ll assign the tone to a contact.

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17. Tap the contact that you want.

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18. Then, choose whether you want your custom tone to be the Text Tone or Ring Tone depending on what you would rather hear.

And that’s all there is to it!

You’ll also be able to find the ringtone you’ve made whenever you go back to change a ringtone.

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You can follow this same process but use recorded sounds or even build your own song from the ground up using GarageBand.

How to Delete a Custom Ringtone

If at some point, you want to delete the ringtone you’ve made, you can do so, but it’s not very intuitive. You cannot simply delete it from the Sounds settings page, you have to go back into GarageBand to do it.

Follow these steps:

1. Open up GarageBand. Tap and hold the project file.

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2. Tap Share.

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3. Then, tap the Ringtone button to return to the Ringtone screen.

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4. Now, because you have previously made a ringtone, tap Your Ringtones.

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5. Swipe left on the ringtone that you want to delete, and then tap Delete.

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6. That ringtone will no longer be available to use.

While custom ringtones are very much a supported feature, the interface and the steps it requires to use them are quite clunky. Hopefully Apple gives the ringtone capabilities a little love in some future update!

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