How to create your own ringtones

You can turn a song into a ringtone by converting an mp3 audio file into a smaller audio clip. There are free tools online to shorten mp3 files and clip out the part of the song that you want to use as a ringtone. You can also convert the file into another format if that works better on your phone. This tutorial guides you towards creating your own ringtones.

Choose a song to use as a ringtone

To make a phone ringtone, you need to have a song or music file ready to be converted. Some songs have copy protection and they can not be used as custom ringtones because the ringtone editor can not handle protected files. Be sure you have a non-DRM song file saved as an mp3 on your computer so that you can make your music into a free ringtone.

Install Audacity

Audacity is free software that you can download and install. It is not just a ringtone maker. Audacity is a full music editor, so you can change the speed of sound clips and merge clips together. You can use Audacity to make the best ringtone ever!

Import your song into Audacity

Once you have installed Audacity, you can import your song and edit the file. If you want to make your own song online, you can do that and save it as a .wav or .mp3 file. Audacity may need to install some supporting files to handle different audio file formats. Do not worry: you can trust the Audacity software as a ringtone creator. It is not spyware and there are a lot of helpful forums online to help you solve problems if you get confused.

Snip your song to the section you want to use as a ringtone

You can use the common keyboard shortcuts of "ctrl+x" (cut) and "ctrl+v" (paste) when you use Audacity as an mp3 ringtone maker. Put the song clips you want into your ringtone software and save them as a new file. Do this for all the songs you want to use as free ringing tones.

Save your song in your phone's file format

Most phones either use mp3 files or wav files for ringtones. Save your new ringtone in the right file type for your phone. If you are not sure what your phone uses, look at the other ringtone files on your phone to see what the end extension is, and choose the same extension in Audacity.

Move your ringtone to your phone

Some phones will let you install your new ringtone through a USB cable connection, some will let you email them to yourself and download them to your phone, and some phones will not allow external files to be used as phones. You can learn how to get free ringtones on your phone by looking at your phone's instructions for adding music, sound or audio files to your mobile.