How to Create Custom iPhone Ringtones With GarageBand

By Alexia Petrakos

Nintey-nine cents isn't a huge price to pay for a song, but if you already have a gigantic collection of music in your iTunes library and want to use one of those songs as a ringtone for your iPhone, 99 cents is a bit of a stretch. Apple now allows user-created custom ringtones for the iPhone. All you need is iLife's latest version of Garageband and iTunes and you're ready to turn any song in your iTunes library into a 40-second looped ringtone.

Step 1
Launch iTunes.

Step 2
Launch GarageBand.

Step 3
Select "New Music Project" if this is the first time you've opened GarageBand.

Step 4
Click "Create." There is no need to type in a name for the project.

Step 5
Select all tracks (if there are any) on the GarageBand workspace, click "Track" > "Delete Track" to start with a fresh work area.

Step 6
Drag and drop the song you want to make into a ringtone from iTunes into GarageBand. This will make a new track you can edit.

Step 7
Click the "Cycle Region" button on the bottom of the screen--the one with two arrows looped in on itself.

Step 8
Drag the yellow bar above the track's timeline, called the "region loop tool," to the spot you want to begin your ringtone.

Step 9
Expand the region loop tool by clicking on one of the ends and dragging it along the timeline to the part of the song you want to use as a ringtone. The limit is 40 seconds.

Step 10
Click "Share" on the menu bar and select "Send Ringtone to iTunes". GarageBand converts the song to the .m4r format that iPhones use for ringtones, and it will save it to your iTunes ringtone library.

Step 11
Sync your iPhone to iTunes to upload the new ringtones.