Transferring custom made ringtones from iMac to iPhone.

A key detail for Catalina and later is that the file you're trying to add to the device must no longer be referenced by the library, and then you should follow these steps.

Add ringtone to device, macOS 10.5 Catalina or later

1. Connect your device to your Mac with a cable, and open the general tab for it in Finder.
2. Drag and drop your .m4r file from another open Finder window to the General tab for your device.

tt2

Hello JazzmanJohn,

We would like to see how we can help you with your custome ringtones. Follow the steps in this link, depending on your version of macOS: Use tones and ringtones with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Cheers!

JazzmanJohn wrote:

I no longer have iTunes. I have Apple Music app Version 1.0.6.10. I have Catalina10.15.7.

The user tip includes details for Music as well as iTunes.

Under creating a ringtone step 7, how do you delete the new entry without sending it to trash? Do you drag it to the desktop?

Select the item in the library, press the backspace key to delete it, confirm that you want it removed from the library, when asked if you also want the file sent to the trash click No.

I don't have a tones or ringtone folder anywhere.

You can make a dedicated folder for storing them, wherever you please. I use <Media Folder>/Tones so they are backed up with the rest of my media.

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

There is a section in Create and manage ringtones - Apple Community titled Removing hidden tones. If you have DRM laden content from iTunes, e.g. Apple Music content, or purchases from 2009 or earlier, then they cannot be converted. Are you able to get what should be a valid .m4r file made that then won't transfer, or do you get blocked earlier in the process? If it is the former a workaround might be to convert a purchase to say .mp3, and then generate a new .m4a/AAC file from that to become the .m4r.

tt2

Oops.

tt2

There is a section in Create and manage ringtones - Apple Community titled Removing hidden tones. If you have DRM laden content from iTunes, e.g. Apple Music content, or purchases from 2009 or earlier, then they cannot be converted. Are you able to get what should be a valid .m4r file made that then won't transfer, or do you get blocked earlier in the process? If it is the latter a workaround might be to convert a purchase to say .mp3, and then generate a new .m4a/AAC file from that to become the .m4r.

tt2

See Create and manage ringtones in iTunes - Apple Community.

tt2

The <some text> convention is used to describe a value that might be different for different users, but which you should be able to fill in from context. To see the location of your media folder in Music open the menu item Music > Preferences > Files. Typically the media folder in Catalina will be ~/Music/Music/Media where ~ is your users Home folder /Users/<ProfileName>. I would place ringtones at ~/Music/Music/Media/Tones, but again you don't have to. You can save them anywhere that makes sense for you. And yes you want your media included in either a Time Machine backup or any other process you might choose to copy the data to another drive and update the backup with future changes.

tt2

You cannot make ringtones from Apple Music subscription content or anything that is currently in the cloud. You should be able to create a ringtone from a purchased song if you set start and end points, convert to a new AAC file, and remove the created file from the library before changing the file extension.

tt2