Spoken Ringtones

Brief Description:

When you assign ringtones to alert you of important events, it is impossible to know by the sound what that event actually is.

For example, instead of hearing a musical chime, how about hearing your alert tell you what the event is by speaking to you.

Here are some examples of such events:

• Time to wake up.
• Don't be late for work.
• Time for break in one minute.
• Time for lunch in one minute.
• Time to leave in one minute.

You are not limited by those examples.

Think of all the things you could remind yourself of.

You could remind yourself to take your medicine at a certain time, to exercise or just about anything.

Step 1: Create the script:

1. On your Mac, open TextEdit
2. Press Command + N (New Document)
3. Press Command + Shift + T to toggle Plain Text mode on
4. Type whatever you want (anything you want spoken)
5. Press Command + Q to Save and Quit
6. Name the file whatever you want, make sure to save to the Desktop and press return

Step 2: Convert to speech:

1. On your Mac, open Terminal
2. Press Command + K to clear the screen
3. Type "say -f " (be sure to include a space)
4. Drag the file you created from the Desktop into the Terminal
5. Type "-o " (be sure to include a space)
6. Drag the same file from the Desktop into the Terminal again
7. Delete ".txt" by pressing ESC + Delete twice
8. Press return to create the audio file to the Desktop
9. Press Command + Q to quit the Terminal

Step 3: Create the ringtone:

1. Right-Click the audio file on the Desktop
2. From the menu that appears, click "Encode Selected Audio Files"
3. From the dialogue box that appears, simply press return to create a new file with a .m4a extension
4. Click and rename from .m4a into .m4r to replace the audio with a ringtone, then press return
5. Select "Use .m4r" from the dialogue box that appears

Step 4: Connect your iPhone:

1. Plug your iPhone into your Mac with the appropriate cable
2. Open the Finder on your Mac
3. Click your iPhone from the Finder sidebar
4. Click and drag the ringtone to your iPhone (Finder) to copy the file
5. Click the Eject ⏏ icon to eject your iPhone
6. Close the Finder
7. Unplug the cable from your Mac and iPhone

Step 5: Assign your ringtone:

1. From your iPhone, open the Clock app
2. Select "Alarm"
3. Select a time to edit
4. Select "Sound"
5. Scroll up to see your custom ringtone(s)
6. You can easily delete your custom ringtone(s) by swiping to the left
7. Select your new ringtone
8. Select "< Back"
9. Select "Save"