Can't play ringtone in iOS 11

Glad you feel better. I do hope you know this is a user to user forum and Apple isn't here. Actually, ranting is against the TOU we agree to when we join this user to user forum. I get your frustration, and I don't mean to trivialize it, but it's a ringtone. You haven't lost use of your phone. And your memory of Steve Jobs and assertion products were somehow less prone to issues is somewhat hazy. Even under Steve there were goofs, issues, iOS updates that caused more issues than they fixed. While Apple beta tests these iOS upgrades very carefully, the reality is once out in the wild, things will happen that no one anticipated. Doesn't make the process bad, but one has to recognize that when millions upon millions adopt a new OS, there are going to be things that didn't come up in Beta testing and weren't expected. We have two IP6 phones. Both under the same Apple ID, so shared ringtones, apps, pictures and music. After updating, one of the phones never lost the ability to play a selected downloaded ringtone. The other one did. So we just bought another ringtone (we get bored of them anyway) and that's that. Until Apple releases an update (which they surely will) and we get the function back, which we surely will.

Thank you for your response. Is there another method to get Apple’ staff attention other than a phone call?

One dot update has been released and the issue still remains.

I remember the alarm clock not working a couple of major updates ago. If I remember correctly that plagued users on and off until the next major update.

I know this seems trivial to some but it’s a safety issue for me working on large equipment. If I have to stop what I’m doing and pull the phone out of my pocket to see who is calling bad things could happen. I’m awaiting the fate of a family member and some robo caller now gets the same priority ringtone as my family member. It is a major issue for some people under certain circumstances. I’m not asking for some fancy iCloud capability to work across all devices. I’m asking for basic phone functionality available in phones since the 90’s. Correct me if I’m wrong but this is an iPhone who’s first and foremost functionality is just that, a phone. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, Apple dropped the ball.

Thank you for taking the time to help others. It warms my heart to see people working hard to help others.

I am having the exact same problem. I’ve done the “closing apps and shutting down the phone” reset. Didn’t work. Still the same problem of the iPhone default ringtone overriding any personal options I’ve selected. Even for individual contacts.

After trying many, if not all suggestions, I repurchased my ringtone and that was the only thing that worked. Should I have to re-spend $1.29 to buy my ringtone again? No! But I couldn’t deal with the annoyance anymore.

I’m glad you made progress! Very encouraging.

I tried to purchase the same ringtone yesterday and it said I’d already paid but would I like to download it again. It downloaded and I tried the suggestions in this post but it still didn’t work. Consider your situation a big #Win

Enjoy your ringtones! 👍-1F3FB;

chodges7165 wrote:

Delete and Reinstall the ring tone program. If it still does not work, then it is probably 32bit and not a 64bit program/ring tones. Try checking for 64bit or a update to your ringtone program.

What Ringtone Program? It's not like it's an App on our phones, so I'm very curious what you think one can delete and reinstall?

i just downloaded an older version of itunes on my pc, and solved the problem. if you have a itunes music library from the newest version of itunes, find it on C:/users/"username"/musics/itunes and delete it before you start the itunes. after that its just easy as then. do not update itunes until the problem is fixed.

I have this issue too.......it doesn't seem to matter what I do or change, I'm now stuck with the default 'opening' ringtone, the same as everyone else in the room with an iphone.....not very handy! Come on Apple, sort it out!

Since I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe Apple did this to sell us new tones, I did decide to get some new ringtones just for the fun of it. I hadn't purchased any new tones in quite some time. I figure I drop $4 - $6 on a Venti Latte at Starbucks without hesitation, so three new tones cost me a whopping $3.87.

Somethings definitely not right about that. Have you rebooted your phone lately? If you have a phone lower than iPhone 7, press and hold BOTH the power and home buttons until the Apple Logo appears then let go and your phone will reboot. For iPhone 7, press Both the HOME and volume down buttons until the Apple Logo appears.

iPhone 6 my custom ringtone has worked fine all they way back to a iPhone 4. Upgrade to iOS 11 nor the upgrade fails to 11.02 fix it. Nice beta test. I have used Apple products since their beginning. Surprised I did not see the system bomb appear! 😁

Yes, I have rebooted many times doing hard reset and shut it down. I have not tried to preview tones until now and it’ll probably let me buy them but want to hear them first and they start out like a preview and stop before it star

That didn’t work for me. I also tried choosing the default, powering off, then choosing a new ringtone, backing up then rebooting my phone again. It’s on the chosen ringtone but still rings to “default “ ringtone 😑 I haven’t updated my software from iOS 11 to the 11.1. Would that fix the problem?

I am having the same issue. Furthermore, I have found that I cannot play any ringtones in the iTunes Store before purchasing them. I can’t be sure if the issues are related, but it is an interesting coincidence.

It's an interesting coincidence, I'd say. We have two iP6 phones. One still played the selected downloaded ringtone after iOS11 and one went to the default ringtone many here are now stuck with. However, even on the phone stuck on the default ringtone, we were able to play ringtone samples.