The iPhone, iPhone accessories, and iPhone ringtones are all the rage right now, so why not make your own iPhone ringtone? With a Mac or Windows PC it’s pretty straightforward using iTunes, follow these 10 steps and you can easily create your own iPhone Ringtone from whatever song you want. Note that songs with DRM will not usually work, meaning things purchased from the iTunes Music Store will probably not be able to turn into ringtones if they have DRM protection.

10 Easy Steps to Make your own Custom iPhone Ringtone for Free

1: Launch iTunes

2: Find the song that you want to use for your iPhone ringtone, make note of the start and stop times of what you want to be the actual ringtone (the chorus, or whatever).

3: Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Windows) the song you chose and select ‘Get Info’

4: Click the ‘Options’ tab and set the start and stop time of your ringtone in the settings below. Keep the selection at 30 seconds or less. Click ‘OK’ – Note: I suggest making a backup copy of the song so you don’t accidentally shorten the song itself.

5: Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Windows) the song again and select ‘Convert Selection to AAC’ and iTunes will convert the song as another copy in the AAC format.

6: Now Control-Click or Right-click the ringtone and select ‘Delete’ making sure to click on the “Keep Files” button

7: Locate the file you just created. Typically located in your home directory under Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and then under the band’s name, the file you’re looking for will have an m4a extension

8: Now replace the ‘m4a’ extension of the ringtone file with “m4r” , so if the file is named MrRoboto.m4a the new file will be called MrRoboto.m4r – you’ll get a warning about changing the file extension time but click “OK”

9: Double click to open the ringtone file you just renamed. iTunes will automatically add this new ringtone to the Ringtones folder within the application

10: Finally, connect your iPhone and sync your new ringtone! You can then select it as any other iPhone ringtone via your iPhone settings.

This method will work in iTunes under Windows or Mac OS X!

It’s critical to remember that in order for the iPhone ringtone to work, it must have the proper iPhone ringtone extension of “.m4r” in use and appended to the filename. Without the file being an .m4r, iTunes and the iPhone will not recognize the file as a ringtone, and the file will not appear in the iTunes “Tones” folder for transferring to your phone.

Update: If you have upgraded to iTunes 9.1 or later and you are having problems, you will need to make some changes to the preferences in order to convert songs to m4a ringtone format in iTunes 9.1. Other than the import settings adjustment to iTunes Preferences, the process is practically identical. You will still need to create an .m4a file then rename the extension to .m4r for iTunes to recognize it as a ringtone.