What happened to the ability to upload my own ringtones with iTunes?

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What happened to the ability to upload my own ringtones with iTunes?

I’m coming back to the iPhone after an absence from iOS for several years. What happened to the ability to upload my own ringtones with iTunes? “Tones” in my library has disappeared from the latest version of iTunes I was forced to download to my laptop to get sync to work. There is a Tones folder in my iPhone section, but I can’t drag anything into it. Is this no longer possible? Is the format something other than AAC /M4A now?

Posted on Mar 14, 2022 5:48 PM

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Answer 1

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W Sanders Author

Level 1

24 points

Mar 15, 2022 9:58 AM in response to W Sanders

This is still possible in iOS 15 but not documented anywhere. There are some ancient threads in these forums, and this top still works: Turn on "Manually manage music and videos." OBVIOUSLY. You will then have a Tones folder on your iPhone that you can drag .m4r files into. The "iTunes Media" -> "Tones" folder will not automatically sync to your device, you'll have to open the folder and drag them over. My "iTunes Media" -> "Tones" folder was still there and full of .m4r files from my iPhone 9 days.

I also found that some of the original tones .mp3 files are low bit rate, 8000 Hz. These would not load into iTunes, so there is some minimum bit rate at which .mp3 files can be loaded into iTunes.

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,297 points

Mar 15, 2022 1:56 PM in response to W Sanders

See Create and manage ringtones - Apple Community.

tt2

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Answer 3

Mar 27, 2022 4:13 AM in response to W Sanders

Same here. I am no longer able to manually sync or drag and drop ringtones anymore with the latest version of Apple Music (1.2.3.56 on macOS Monterey 12.3) and/or iOS (15.4). I tried disabling Cloud Music Library to manually sync the songs (along with all my ringtones) from my Music Library but all that did was remove the songs I downloaded from Apple Music and no new ringtones were synced. I am now stuck with the same old 8 ringtones I already have on my iPhone from the previous sync when Music was still called iTunes. All my ringtones are in m4a (.m4r) format and 30 seconds in duration. I've been manually syncing custom ringtones for years and it is really upsetting that I am now no longer able to do so. I sure hope that this is just a bug or some temporary thing. Or perhaps there's now a new method to manually sync ringtones that we are not aware of?

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What happened to the ability to upload my own ringtones with iTunes?

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