Creating iPhone Ringtones

The iPhone allows you to set custom tones to play when you receive a phone call or text message, as well as when an alarm or timer goes off. With custom tones, you can assign specific sounds or music to individuals, so you can tell who's calling or texting without even looking at your phone. You can even pick music to wake up to — rise and shine with your favorite song, or force yourself out of bed with music you despise.

Fission enables you to transform any audio file into a tone for use on any iOS device. While these custom tones are often referred to as “iPhone ringtones”, they work great with the iPod Touch and iPad, in addition to the iPhone.

Editing a Ringtone in Fission
Editing an audio file down, with Fission

To get started, just open a file in Fission and select the exact audio you want for the ringtone. Once you have your audio selected, use the Crop function to remove the rest. Be sure to keep your custom tone under 40 seconds in length. For text tones, you'll likely want a much shorter file of around 1 or 2 seconds.

Edited Ringtone in Fission
A custom tone, cropped and ready for saving

Give the cropped audio a test listen to confirm it's exactly what you want, then select “Save as iPhone Ringtone” from the File menu. Fission will process the file and save it to your Music folder, in ~/Music/Tones. Fission will also open this folder in the Finder.

The last step is getting the file onto your iOS device. Navigate to your device in iTunes, then click the Tones section. Drag and drop your custom tone from the Finder into the Tones section, and you should be set. iTunes will then sync your audio over to the device, and you can start using it immediately.

Ringtone in iTunes
The Tones section of an iOS device, as seen in iTunes

If you need further assistance with syncing your custom tones to your iOS device, see this article in the Support center on our website.

Storing Tones on Your Mac

Because iTunes no longer saves new custom tones in its iTunes Music Library, we recommend manually saving a copy of these files on your Mac. Fission automatically saves your custom tones to your Music folder, in ~/Music/Tones. To ensure you have a backup of these files, we recommend simply keeping them there.