Ringtone Maker

Every other ringtone maker asks you for a length and a file type and leaves you to know what your phone will accept. This one asks what the tone is for, and works the rest out — including the two things people most often get wrong: the .m4r extension an iPhone needs, and a level that matches the tones already on the phone.

• A real .m4r. iPhone tones are written as .m4r files, not as an .m4a you have to rename afterwards.
• The platform's own limits. 40 seconds for an iPhone ringtone, 30 for a text tone, no limit on Android — enforced by the length control's range, not by a message after the fact.
• Loudness that matches the phone. Measured and matched to a target in two passes, so the tone lands on it exactly.
• Fades that behave. Linear or exponential, applied after the level is set rather than before it.
• No click at the edges. Edit points snap to the nearest zero crossing.
• A copy instead of a re-encode. When nothing about the audio has to change, the original frames are copied across untouched.
• A waveform you can aim with. Real zoom, arrow-key nudging, and a looping preview of the exact tone.
• Ten tones from one song. With Pro, in one pass, as one archive.

A ringtone and a text tone are different files with different rules, and a tone that breaks a rule does not fail loudly — it simply never appears in the phone's list. Picking the target sets all of it at once.

• iPhone ringtone. A .m4r file of at most 40 seconds. Longer tones are refused by iOS, and GarageBand shortens anything over the limit rather than installing it.
• iPhone text tone. The same .m4r, but 30 seconds is the limit for an alert. This is the one people trip over, because nothing about the file looks different.
• Android ringtone. MP3 by default and no length limit at all — Android enforces none, so the tool does not invent one. Thirty seconds is a good habit, not a rule.
• Android notification. OGG by default, which is what Android ships its own notification sounds as, and short: a few seconds is the whole point.

Making the file is the easy half. This is the part every tool leaves out.

• iPhone, with a computer. Connect the phone and open Finder (macOS) or iTunes (Windows). Drag the .m4r onto the phone. It appears under Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Ringtone.
• iPhone, without a computer. Open the .m4r in GarageBand for iOS, hold the file in the browser, and choose Share > Ringtone.
• Android. Copy the file into the Ringtones folder in internal storage (or Notifications for a notification tone), then pick it in Settings > Sound. Most phones also offer "Set as ringtone" straight from the file manager.
• Any phone. A tone can also be set per contact, so one person gets the tone you just made and everyone else keeps the default.

A song is already compressed. Cutting a piece out of it and compressing that piece again throws away a little more of it, every time — which is why a ringtone made from an MP3 that was itself made from a CD can sound noticeably worse than the song it came from. When nothing about the audio has to change — the same kind of audio in, no fades, no loudness matching — this tool copies the original frames into the new file instead of decoding and re-compressing them. The audio that comes out is the audio that went in, and it is roughly instant: measured on this machine at one to two thousandths of a second of work against seventy for the same span re-encoded. Every result says which of the two happened, and when it re-encoded, why it had to.

Loudness is not volume. A quiet verse and a loud chorus can peak at exactly the same level while sounding nothing alike, so a tone cut from the wrong thirty seconds is quiet no matter how high the phone's volume goes. Matching measures the clip the way broadcasters do — averaged over the whole thing, weighted for how hearing actually works — and then moves it to a chosen target. The default is -14 LUFS, which is what music streaming services deliver, so the tone sits level with the music the phone already plays. Two passes are used rather than one: the first measures, the second applies a single calculated gain. A single pass adapts as it goes and lands near the target instead of on it — measured here, the two-pass form is exact to 0.00 LU at every target offered.

• Start at the hook. A ringtone has about three seconds to be recognisable, so begin where the chorus begins rather than where the song does.
• Use the looping preview. A tone is heard on repeat, and a clip that sounds fine once can be irritating on the fourth pass.
• Keep a short fade-in — half a second is enough to avoid the tone starting mid-note, and it is why the default is not zero.
• Use an exponential fade-out for a tone that stops rather than one that trails away; linear is the gentler of the two.
• Leave loudness matching on unless you are deliberately making something quiet. A notification you cannot hear is not a notification.
• For a text tone, aim for two to five seconds. Thirty is the limit, not the target.
• 128 kbps is plenty through a phone speaker. Higher bitrates make a bigger file that sounds the same from a pocket.

• A ringtone from a favourite song. The chorus, at the length the phone allows, without installing anything.
• A text tone that is not the default. Two seconds of something recognisable, inside the 30-second alert limit.
• A notification sound. A short, quiet-ish tone for one app, in the OGG format Android uses for its own.
• A contact tone. One tone per person, so you know who is calling without looking.
• An alarm you will not sleep through. Something with a hard start rather than a slow fade.
• A tone from a voice memo or a podcast. Any audio the tool can open, including the sound inside a video.

• M4R the iPhone's own tone format. Pick it for anything going on an iPhone.
• MP3 plays on everything. The safe default for Android and for sharing.
• OGG what Android ships its own notification sounds as. Small at the same quality.
• M4A and AAC the same audio as M4R in the ordinary containers, for anything that is not a phone tone.
• FLAC and WAV no compression loss at all, at several times the size. Useful as a master, rarely as a tone.

One tone at a time, at the full length the phone allows, from a file up to 50 MB and up to 30 minutes long, at up to 192 kbps and 44.1 kHz. Nothing about that single tone is degraded — the length limits are the phone's, not ours. Pro raises the file size to whatever your device can handle, allows up to ten clips from one song delivered as a single archive, and unlocks 320 kbps, 48 kHz and 24-bit output for the lossless formats.

Cut, faded and levelled on your device — the song is never uploaded.

• Audio cutter
• Audio compressor
• Audio converter
• Fade audio