How to use the ringtone maker
- Open a song from your device: an MP3, M4A, WAV or FLAC file, or a video.
- Choose iPhone or Android. The page guesses from your device, and you can switch.
- Pick the part. Drag the shaded window, tap the waveform, or press Find the loudest part, which often lands on the chorus. Choose a shorter Length for a notification or alarm sound.
- Listen. Ring preview plays the window three times, like an incoming call. Turn on Phone speaker to hear roughly how a small speaker will sound.
- Download the M4R for an iPhone or the MP3 for Android, then follow the steps that appear under the download.
The default fade-out of one second keeps the ringtone from stopping abruptly each time it repeats.
With the editor focused, Space plays and stops, the arrow keys move the window by half a second (5 seconds with Shift), I starts the window at the playhead and R plays the ring preview.
Put the ringtone on your iPhone
iPhones list ringtones in the M4R format. Pick whichever method suits you.
On the iPhone (iOS 26 or later)
Save the file to the Files app: press Download, or press Share and choose Save to Files. In Files, touch and hold the ringtone, tap Share, then tap Use as Ringtone. This works for ringtones of 30 seconds or less.
With a computer
Connect the iPhone with a cable. On a Mac, open Finder and select the iPhone in the sidebar. On Windows, use the Apple Devices app. Drag the .m4r file onto the iPhone. This method accepts ringtones up to 40 seconds, so turn on “Allow up to 40 s” first if you want a longer one.
With GarageBand on the iPhone
Import the file into a GarageBand project, go back to My Songs, touch and hold the project, tap Share and choose Ringtone. GarageBand shortens anything over 30 seconds.
Whichever way you add it, open Settings, then Sounds & Haptics, then Ringtone, and pick your ringtone at the top of the list.
If it doesn’t appear, check that the file name ends in .m4r and, for the Files method, that the ringtone is 30 seconds or shorter. The same list also offers your ringtones for text tones and alarms.
Set the ringtone on Android
Android phones play MP3 ringtones. After downloading, open Settings, then Sound & vibration, then Phone ringtone, and add the file from your Downloads folder. On a Samsung phone, the path is Settings, Sounds and vibration, Ringtone, then the + button. Some file managers also offer Set as ringtone when you touch and hold an MP3.
To give one person their own sound, open the contact, tap Edit or the menu, and choose Set ringtone. Menus differ between brands and Android versions; searching Settings for “ringtone” finds the right screen.
Choosing a good part
Start the window right on the hook: the first two seconds decide whether you recognize your phone in a noisy room. Loud, steady parts such as a chorus carry over street noise better than a quiet intro, which is why Find the loudest part looks for the stretch with the most energy.
Phone speakers are small. Most reproduce little below roughly 100 to 200 Hz, so a bass line nearly disappears while vocals and melody cut through. Phone speaker preview imitates this with a filter that removes everything below 200 Hz. If your part sounds thin with it on, try a section where the singer or the lead instrument is up front.
Normalize raises the loudest peak to −1 dB, so the ringtone is as loud as the phone allows without distortion. Leave it on unless the song is already very loud.
For a notification or an alarm, shorter is better: 10 seconds that start strong. An alarm can build instead: a fade-in of two or three seconds wakes you more gently than a sudden blast.
M4R or MP3?
An M4R file is AAC audio in an MPEG-4 file, the same as an M4A song with a different name. iPhones look for that name when they list ringtones. Android uses MP3. The MP3 is saved at 192 kbps, which keeps a 30-second ringtone around 720 KB and sounds clean on a phone speaker. The M4R asks your browser’s AAC encoder for the same rate, and some encoders use less for mono songs, so that file can be smaller.
AAC adds a little padding at the start, between about 1,000 and 2,100 samples, so a file cut to exactly 30.0 seconds comes out at about 30.07 seconds and may be refused. That’s why the iPhone option makes 29.8-second ringtones, which come out at about 29.86 seconds. Some browsers can’t create AAC files yet. Then the page offers the MP3 instead, which recent iPhones can also use as a ringtone from the Files app.
Songs from streaming apps, YouTube or TikTok
Web pages can’t read the audio inside Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or TikTok, and protected downloads such as Apple Music files can’t be decoded either. Use a song file you own or a video you recorded, or record your own tone with the online voice recorder. For clips that aren’t ringtones, the MP3 cutter saves a part of any length as MP3 or WAV.
Your song stays on your device
Everything happens in your browser. The song is decoded, cut and encoded on your phone or computer: the M4R with the browser’s built-in AAC encoder, and the MP3 with an encoder that loads only when you ask for one. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored after you close the page, so you can use songs and recordings you’d rather keep private.