Your own sound as a ringtone
WAV is the format you usually have when you made a sound yourself: a recorded voice, a guitar riff, a beat from music software, or a sound effect from a library. Turning it into an iPhone ringtone needs two things: the audio must be AAC, and the file must use the .m4r extension. This converter does both in one step, without uploading the recording anywhere.
Length rules
| Use on iPhone | Maximum length | Tip |
|---|---|---|
| Ringtone | 40 seconds | loops while the phone rings |
| Text tone, alert, alarm | 30 seconds | short sounds of 1 to 5 seconds work best |
If your WAV is longer, this page saves a 40-second part from the start time you enter. For a visual selection with fades, use the iPhone ringtone maker.
Making it sound good on a phone
- A ringtone repeats, so choose a part that loops naturally or add a short fade at both ends.
- Phone speakers are small and cannot play deep bass. A tone with energy in the middle range, such as a voice, a bell or a guitar, is heard more easily.
- Make the level strong. A quiet WAV becomes a quiet ringtone; raise it with normalize or increase volume before converting.
- Silence at the start delays the ring, so trim it.
Quality, size and installing
Since WAV is lossless, any of the three bitrates gives a clean result. A 30-second ringtone at 192 kbps is about 0.7 MB, compared with about 5 MB for the WAV. The ringtone name on the phone comes from the file name, so rename the file before installing.
To install, connect the iPhone and drag the .m4r onto the device in Finder (Mac) or onto Tones in iTunes (Windows). Without a computer, save it to Files, open it in GarageBand on the phone, and use Share, Ringtone. Then choose the sound in Settings under Sounds and Haptics.