'ring once' ringtone ?

You cannot set the phone to ring like that directly. So, you have two options:

1) You can contact your carrier and have then shorten the duration of time until incoming calls roll to voicemail. But that would apply all the time, not just when you left your phone on the desk...

2) Create a custom ringtone that is ~39 seconds long (no longer than 40 seconds) and has one ring of your choice, then silence. GarageBand can do that, as can other audio editing software. The file would need to be in the .m4a format, and you change the extension to .m4r and import it to your iTunes Library, then sync it to the iPhone.

EvilWillow,

Even though you say that you do not want to learn Garageband, it is really easy to use for the purpose of ringtones and widely available.

I have Garageband 8 (4.1.2), and it some user interface that it is specifically set up for creating ringtones. I think that if you learn the ringtone features, then you will probably find that garageband is also useful for a lot of other tasks including combining songs, shortening them and many other tasks that can come in real handy at a party or otherwise.

Hi EvilWillow,

I do not know the differences betwen Garageband 4.1.1 and 4.1.2. I am using 4.1.2. Here's what I do:

1) Create a new "real instrument" track.

2) Drag a song into that track.

3) Under "share" select "send ringtone to Itunes" (this causes an error message, stating that your itunes track needs to be adjusted to 40 seconds or less)

4) Click the "adjust" button (this causes an additional ruler to appear at the top of the window with a yellow segment that simulates length of the ringtone).

5) Place and adjust the yellow segment parallel to the area of the track that you want to preserve as your ringtone - so far I have been choosing an area equivalent to 40 seconds.

6) Repeat step 3 - Under "share" select "send ringtone to Itunes" (this causes the track to be sent to the ringtones section of your Itunes)

7) Name your new ringtone in Itunes.

Hopefully the above description helps.

EvilWillow,

This is to supplement my earlier post:

If you want to create a ringtone that rings once and then goes silent for the remainder of time (such as 40 seconds), then there are a couple of ways to accomplish that goal:

1) You can create a second sound track (with no sound on it) to span the remainder of the 40 second time (in Garageband you would place the total ringtone portion of the track under the yellow portion of the guiding ruler), or

2) You could have two segments of sound clips on your Garageband track. The area with your desired ringtone would fall under the beginning area of the yellow ruler guide and the second segment would fall outside of the yellow ruler. In this scenario, you would not have any track portion underneath the end portion of your yellow ruler which would cause Garageband to send the ringtone to Itunes as a 40 second clip with sound only at the beginning portion of the track (the sound that you have chosen).

I hope this helps.