Making a ringtone in four steps
- Choose a song or recording: MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, FLAC, or a video whose sound you want. The waveform appears and the first 30 seconds are selected.
- Drag the handles on the waveform to the part you want, or type the start and end times. Press Play the selection to hear exactly what you are keeping.
- Add a fade. A fade in of 1 or 2 seconds avoids a sudden blast when the phone rings; a fade out (2 seconds to begin with) stops it ending abruptly.
- Choose the format for your phone and save.
A good ringtone starts strongly, so pick a moment where the tune or chorus is already going rather than a quiet introduction. 20 to 30 seconds is usually plenty: most calls are answered or missed well before that.
Which format for which phone
| Format | Use it for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | Android ringtones, alarms and notification sounds | Plays on everything |
| iPhone ringtone (M4R) | iPhone ringtones | AAC sound, at most 40 seconds |
| M4A | A short clip to keep or share | Same sound as M4R, no length limit |
| WAV | Editing software, some upload forms | Uncompressed, about 10 MB a minute |
For MP3, M4R and M4A you can choose 128, 192 or 256 kbps. 192 kbps is a good balance for music.
Setting it as your iPhone ringtone
Apple does not let you set a ringtone straight from a download, so there are two routes:
- With a computer. Connect your iPhone with its cable. On a Mac, open it in Finder; on Windows, open the Apple Devices app or iTunes. Drag the .m4r file onto the iPhone. Then on the iPhone go to Settings, Sounds & Haptics, Ringtone, where it appears at the top of the list.
- On the iPhone alone. Save the file to the Files app. Open GarageBand (free from Apple), start a new project, import the file, then use Share, Ringtone. GarageBand can also set it as your ringtone straight away.
Setting it as your Android ringtone
Save the MP3, then open Settings, Sound (on some phones Sounds and vibration), Phone ringtone, and choose it from your files. The menu names vary between Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus and others. If your ringtone does not appear in the list, move the file into the Ringtones folder using the Files app and look again. The same steps work for alarm and notification sounds.
Want the sound from a video saved whole? Use video to MP3. Need to change a file's format without cutting it? The audio converter does that, and the audio joiner puts several clips together.
The engine behind this tool
Video and sound are processed by FFmpeg, the open-source engine behind most of the world's video software, compiled to run inside your browser as ffmpeg.wasm. It is downloaded from this site (about 31 MB) the first time you use a video or audio tool, and your browser keeps it for next time. FFmpeg and ffmpeg.wasm are free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later; their source code is at github.com/ffmpegwasm/ffmpeg.wasm.