How to make an iPhone ringtone from a song
- Drop the song, a voice memo or a video on the box above.
- Type where the ringtone should start, or press Find the chorus. Press Play this part to hear exactly what you will get.
- Keep Under 30 s unless you will add the ringtone with a computer.
- Press Make the ringtone and download the M4R.
Putting it on your iPhone
iOS 26 (no computer): get the M4R into the Files app, by downloading it on the iPhone itself, saving it to iCloud Drive or sending it with AirDrop. Open it in Files, tap Share, then Use as Ringtone (it may be under More). The iPhone switches to it straight away; you can change it back in Settings, Sounds & Haptics, Ringtone.
Older iOS, with a computer: connect the iPhone with a cable, open Finder on a Mac or iTunes on Windows, and drag the M4R onto the iPhone in the sidebar. It appears under Tones and in the ringtone list.
Older iOS, without a computer: save the M4R to Files, open GarageBand on the iPhone, import it into an empty audio track, then share the project as a Ringtone. GarageBand cuts it at 30 seconds.
Why it ends at 29.9 seconds, not 30
Use as Ringtone on iOS 26 refuses files longer than 30 seconds. The catch is that AAC, the sound format inside an M4R, is stored in blocks of 1,024 samples, so the finished file is slightly longer than the piece you cut. In our test (Chrome on Windows, 18 October 2026, results read with a separate decoder) a 29.9-second cut came out at 29.907 s and a 39.9-second cut at 39.915 s. A ringtone cut at exactly 30.000 seconds can therefore end up a few thousandths of a second over the limit and be rejected, with nothing to show why. This page stops 0.1 s short and shows the length it reads back from the finished file.
Getting a good ringtone
- Find the chorus listens to the whole file once and picks the stretch with the most sound energy for the length you chose. In our test file, with a loud section between 0:30 and 0:50, it chose 0:30 exactly. Most pop songs are loudest at the chorus, but a long instrumental or a drum break can win, so listen before you save.
- As loud as possible without distortion raises the clip until its loudest moment sits at −1 dB below the maximum. A quiet acoustic track or a voice memo gains the most; in our 3-minute test song the clip went up by 4.5 dB. Untick it to keep the original level.
- Fade out (on by default) lowers the last 2 seconds to silence, so the ringtone doesn’t stop mid-note when it loops. Turn on Fade in if the part you chose starts abruptly.
Files that work
MP3, M4A and AAC (including songs bought from the iTunes Store), WAV, FLAC, OGG and Opus, iPhone voice memos, and the sound of MP4 or MOV videos. MP3 files are lined up to the exact sample: browsers start MP3 sound about 25 milliseconds late, and the page corrects for it using the timing note that MP3 encoders write into the file. Voice memos recorded with the Lossless setting can’t be decoded by browsers; turn them into WAV first with M4A to WAV. Songs streamed from Apple Music or Spotify are protected and can’t be used.
Related: to cut a longer piece of audio without making a ringtone, use Trim Audio; to turn an M4R or M4A back into an MP3, M4A to MP3; to make a quiet recording louder by a set amount, Increase Audio Volume. Everything runs in your browser: your music is not uploaded.