How to set a song as a ringtone on iPhone for free

The first step to setting a custom song as a ringtone is to download Apple’s GarageBand app. It’s a free download on the App Store, and while it’s usually used for composing music, it can also be used for our purposes here. 

As Apple doesn’t allow you to use DRM-protected material from the likes of Apple Music and Spotify in GarageBand, you’ll have to download the audio file you’d like to use from various internet sources. There are plenty of sites with free ringtones you can download, but chart-topping songs may be a little more difficult to obtain. 

The next thing to do is open the Garagaband app and create a new song by tapping the plus icon in the top-right. From here you’ll be taken to a menu where you can choose an instrument. Make sure you select Keyboard from the list as others, like Drums, don’t have the Editor functionality needed for this process. 

From here you’ll be brought to a digital version of the keyboard, ready to play your freshly composed jams. That’s not what we need here though; instead, tap the Editor icon in the top-left of the screen. 

With the GarageBand Editor active, it’s time to import the song you’d like to use as a ringtone. To do this, tap the Loop icon in the top-right – it’s the icon that looks like a loop-de-loop to the left of the Settings (cog) icon.

With Apple not allowing the use of DRM-protected content – i.e. songs from Apple Music – you’ll have to use the song or audio file you downloaded earlier. To do this, tap the Files tab and find the file you’d like to use.

Once you’ve found the song you downloaded earlier, it’s time to get it onto the Editor. Rather than tapping on the file as you might expect, you have to tap and hold the file and drag it into place. Most importantly, be sure to drop it onto the second track in the Editor and not the top Piano track. 

Now your song is in the Editor, the next step is to trim it down to something a little more appropriate for a ringtone. As a heads up, the maximum length for a ringtone on iOS is 30 seconds, though if you want to set it as a text alert or alarm, that extends to 40 seconds.

To trim your song, simply tap on the waveform and drag the beginning and end markers (yellow sliders) to the appropriate length. Annoyingly there’s no easy way to see the length of your trimmed audio directly in GarageBand, but you can easily use a timer to time it manually.

Once you’re happy with your trimmed-down masterpiece, it’s time to save it and set it as a ringtone! To do this, tap the downward-facing arrow in the top-left and tap My Songs. This simultaneously exits the editor and saves your work.

Tap and hold your project from the main list of ‘songs’ and tap the Share button. You’ll then be prompted to select how you’d like to share the song – as a song, as a ringtone or as a project. Tap Ringtone. 

Give your ringtone a unique, memorable name so it’s easy to find when browsing through your ringtones in future, and tap Export to begin the saving process. 

Shortly after, a pop-up should appear letting you know that the export was successful. From the pop-up, tap Use sound as… and tap Standard Ringtone. You can also assign it to a specific contact in your address book by tapping Assign to contact, or if you want to use it as a text tone, tap Standard Text Tone.