Create Free Ringtones and Alerts for Your iDevice

Sometimes it's the little things in life that really get you. Sorry, but after spending hundreds of dollars on my iPhone, iPod, or iPad, I'm just not spending another $0.99 or $1.29 for custom ringtones. What is this, the early 2000's when buying ringtones was all the rage? Never fear, though, there is a method to getting around this. The key is that iTunes understands that DRM-free AAC songs with the "m4r" extension are ringtones. The following procedure (adapted from another website that I subsequently lost) will do the trick. It was done using iTunes 10.5 on Windows 7 for my iPhone 4S running iOS 5 (but should work for other configurations as well):

1. In iTunes, right click on the song from which you want to create a ringtone or alert tone and select “Get Info.”
2. Go to the options tab and go down to the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” check boxes. Check both boxes and input the time you want your ringtone to start/stop (it should not be more than 30 seconds for Ringtones or 1-3 seconds for Alert tones). Click OK when you’re done.
3. Right click on your newly “clipped” song and select “Create AAC Version”. If your menu item is set to create another format such as AIFF or MP3, go to Edit > Preferences > General > Import Settings (you'll find that at the end of the "When you insert a CD" line) and change the “Import Using” drop down menu to “AAC Encoder”.  The song will be re-encoded using the start and stop times you chose.
4. After the song is done encoding navigate to your iTunes Music folder in Windows Explorer and locate your song. If you don't know where it is, right click on the clipped song in iTunes and "Get Info". The bottom of that window has the path to the song. For Mac users - right click on the clipped song in iTunes and click on Show in Finder. Drag the song to your desktop. After the song is on your desktop go back to iTunes and delete the clipped version from your iTunes library (it won’t be deleted  from your desktop, just removed from iTunes.)
5. Go back the song on your desktop, right click on your song and choose “Properties.” Go to the name and extension section and change the extension from .m4a to .m4r (or you can just change the extension right from your desktop)
6. After the extension is changed simply double click on the file to add it back into your iTunes library. It will show up under the ringtones section. Click on your device, go to the Ringtones tab and make sure that Sync Ringtones is checked, then sync your iPhone.
7. Use your new ringtone by going to Settings > Sounds and choosing whatever ringtone or alert you would like to change. The new ringtone will show up at the top of the “Ringtones” section.