How to Add a Ringtone on the iPhone 6S

Kale Havervold June 28, 2018

When it comes to personalizing your iPhone, one of the best things you can do is customize the ringtone. While the customization on the iPhone is lacking in a lot of different areas, at least we are able to change our ringtone as often as we want. While changing your ringtone to one of Apple’s preloaded tones or tunes is easy, changing it to a song you want or adding a ringtone is not.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t have a quick and easy way to add a ringtone to your device. So instead, we have to do all the work ourselves. While the process isn’t too difficult, it can be fairly time-consuming when you do it the first few times. It will get easier over time of course, but we would be lying if we said it was very straightforward right from the start.

The problem is, these ringtones on the iPhone need to be in a certain format, so you can’t just choose a song and automatically have it be your iPhone ringtone. So you either have to find your song/tone in the correct format (which is not always an easy task) or you need to convert a song/tone into the correct format. First, we will take a look at what you will do if you are able to find the right song/tone in the right format.

How to Add a Ringtone to the iPhone 6S (File Already in Correct Format)

Step 1: The first thing to do is download the file you found and put it on your desktop.

Step 2: From there, you will want to connect your iPhone 6S or other device to your computer and then open up iTunes.

Step 3: In iTunes, you need to go to File > Add to Library and navigate the location and add the ringtones that you want.

Step 4: Under Setting, hit Tones and then Sync Tones and either choose all of them or just the few that you want.

Step 5: Once you hit Apply, all the ringtones will be added to your phone and will be there for you to use when changing your ringtone in the Settings menu.

However, if the song or sound you want cannot be found in a ringtone format, you will have to change and alter the file for yourself. Here are the steps to do that and be prepared, it is a bit more time consuming than the last method.

How to Add a Ringtone to the iPhone 6S (Have to Change the Format)

Step 1: The first step is to open iTunes and find the song that you want to turn into a ringtone. If the song isn’t in your iTunes library, this won’t work, so you definitely need a way to have it in your iTunes library. Whether you purchase it or just drag and drop it, that’s your call. The maximum length for a ringtone on the iPhone is only 30 seconds long, so make sure the song you want to use has a suitable part of the song to use or make sure the file itself is short. Of course, you can also make a ringtone be significantly less if you just want a few-second clip, no need to have it be the entire 30 seconds.

Step 2: In order to turn a song into the ringtone, you need to take a clip from it (if it is longer than 30 seconds, which most songs are). The way you do this is to right click on the song, hit the Get Info button, then click on Options. In the options tab, you will see a start and a stop. That is where you will put in the time that you want your clip to start and stop for your ringtone. You may have to listen to the song a couple times to know exactly what part of the song you want and what times to put in the start and stop. Once you get it, simply hit OK.

Step 3: Next, you want to create an AAC version of the song by right clicking and selecting Create AAC Version. Now, you will have the original and an AAC version of the song or file. Make sure you can tell which one is the AAC version, simply by giving it a different name. Then you can go ahead and change the original song back to its full length, as you now have a new file that is only a small clip of your song.

Step 4: Next up you want to click on your AAC clip and select Show in Finder and then right-click the song and select Get Info. Under Name and Extension, change the extension from .m4a to .m4r and then save it. Next, drag the file to your desktop. Now you will basically be at the starting point for the last method.

Step 5: Now is the time to connect your iPhone 6S or another device to the computer and open iTunes. Select the three dots next to your phone and click Tones. Then drag the file from the desktop to the Tones folder in iTunes. From then, click on your iPhone near the top, and then click Sync tones and once you select your new tone or tones, you are ready to hit Apply.

Step 6: Once you have synced and it has been applied, go back on your iPhone and then go to Settings, then sounds and finally Ringtones. Your new ringtones should be right there at the top of the list. All you have to do is click it and then it will now be your ringtone. You can repeat this process as many times as you want and make as many ringtones as you want, and can even assign ringtones or noises for specific people in your contacts!

By using one of these two methods, you should be able to add your own ringtone to the iPhone. While it would be great if they allowed for an easier way to do this, this step by step process only becomes easier as you do it more often. So over time, you will become proficient at changing the file type, shortening the file and then adding it to iTunes and your device.