Can't play ringtone in iOS 11

Do you care to share how you know Apple is aware? I figure if they’re aware it would be fixed by now. When this happened a couple of major updates ago it was fixed in about four weeks. Just because a bug report was filed doesn’t mean it was reproducible and given any attention at all.

devnu11 wrote:

Do you care to share how you know Apple is aware? I figure if they’re aware it would be fixed by now. When this happened a couple of major updates ago it was fixed in about four weeks. Just because a bug report was filed doesn’t mean it was reproducible and given any attention at all.

Cause Apple passively monitors these board in unofficial capacity and Apple collects reports of bugs after every update.

If you didn't know update without bugs does not exist, not possible.

I also am pretty sure they already addressed that problem, can't confirm, cause never had it on two phones.

Reason I never had - I do not pay for ringtones, guide to create ringtones posted by me and other people in that and other threads. If Apple did fix the problem in IOS it does not mean your ringtone suddenly starts working. Most likely your ringtones are not recognized by IOS as ringtones cause file was modified during update to recognize as music and not ringtone (hence your ability to play, but not to sound as ringtone). Something similar happened in IOS8.2 (or something like that) and ringtones had to be redownloaded. Once they redownloaded that are back to *M4r files and then should work if I am correct. And none of that I actually know, just guess.... Have a great day everyone.

Thank you for the quick response. I partially agree in looking at the whole picture this is not an “urgent” issue but is quite an annoyance. It’s an iPhone, hint on “phone” as it is a phone and phones need to alert to an incoming call. That said it’s a Phone not a portable gaming console or a workout tracker. Adding 70 Plus emoji is not a critically needed feature but you’d think Apple reinvented DNA by all the media hype they made about new emoji. Admittedly Apple lost it’s “shine” with me personally with iOS 11. Notification Center is just a disgrace and DND until recently had to be turned off on both devices as if you turned it off on the phone it would not turn off on the watch but I digress. I’m hoping this gets addressed soon as I’m not the only person annoyed by this defect. Thank you for helping out the community as if it weren’t for people like yourself there would be a lot of unanswered questions.

You're welcome. Many of my comments in this thread have managed to rub people the wrong way. We're all just users here trying to maximize the use of our phones the way we want to use them. I get that this is annoying and in typical Apple fashion, they never comment about things they are working on UNLESS it's a critical issue. For me, we just moved on and bought new ringtones. Yes, we shouldn't have to buy new tones, but I don't mind having a change now and then as I get somewhat tired of the same tone all the time.

For those who are affected by this, I just have to believe (though don't know positively) that Apple will come out with a fix. I do hope anyone who has this issue will take the time and effort to use the link I provided above to let Apple know. The more who do so, will increase the chances they'll address this in a future iOS release.

I’ve found that a minority of the ringtones I have on my phone do work. To tell which ones will work and which ones will not edit a contact but instead of editing their ring tone edit their text tone (located right below where you pick the ring tone). Scroll through the list of text tones and if you see any of your custom ringtones listed those ringtones will work. Any that aren’t listed in this screen will not work even if you can pick them when selecting a ringtone for a contact or setting the default ring tone.

It’s not a fix for the underlying issue but if you do have any ringtones that show up when assigning a text tone for a contact those will work without any issues if you use them as a ringtone..

I’m a beta tester and just reported this issue (and the information about the work around above to Apple). I think with the launch of the iPhone X they probably have bigger fish to fry. It’s all about how many people file a bug report so if you’re reading this thread take the 5 - 10 minutes it takes to report it. The more noise we make the faster they will fix it.

Thanks Rina....this worked for me. I did as you suggested, then changed the ringtone to the custom one I wanted, force closed the app again, closed down the phone again, restarted it again and , yay, my ringtone is back!!

My iPhone 8 has been through several updates, now on iOS 11.2. My custom default ringtone has never worked. When I set it, it does place the checkmark and plays the selected ringtone, but when I get a call it plays a pre-loaded ringtone. I tried manually closing the app and restarting the phone, that did not help.

I had this same problem and no solution in this thread worked for me. My custom ringtone seemed to be corrupted and would not sound when receiving calls, only the default tone would sound. I just found a solution that worked for me. Apparently my custom ringtone that worked fine until recently was too long and now (post iOS 11 or some iTunes update?) needs to be 40 seconds or less. I recreated the ringtone from an m4a file in my iTunes Library, made it 25 seconds long and converted it to m4r using the instructions below. This is the best explanation I've seen for creating ringtones using iTunes. I did get confused trying to select the song I wanted to use as source from the iPhone itself instead of the iTunes Library. I've always had trouble navigating iTunes. But it's all working now. Hope this helps some others doing endless iPhone resets and waiting for a bug fix that hasn't come.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-make-ringtones-for-iphone/

Glad that works for some of you. I have only 1 ringtone, 16 seconds long, that I’ve used for years. It still isn’t working after the iOS 11 update so I must continue to wait for Apple to fix the bug.

Abba2do wrote:

Not helpfu, did NOT resolve. Hate the default opening ringer FaceTime ringer now stuck with.

I don't believe Apple has ever provided the ability to select a custom or downloaded ring tone for FaceTime.

When I try to back up my phone locally (on my pc) it stops at 99% and doesn't move. It's there even when my phone isn't connected and the little spinny circle on my phone's still there. Even after resetting.

iOS: 11.1, public beta 1.

I went to the local Apple brick & mortar and talked to a Genius Bar tech there. He could not make my .m4r file work as a default ringtone either (iOS 11.2, iPhone 8). His only suggestion was to buy a similar ringtone from the Apple store. Disappointing, since I've used this same ringtone for almost 10 years, and it does work for both the alarm clock and the timer apps. In my humble opinion as a career software engineer, I consider this a bug that Apple is choosing to ignore.

Just got off of the phone with Apple support -after communicating with three different levels of support people, the problem was that I had "Do not disturb" inadvertently on on my iPhone 8 Plus. Hope that this helps! My ringtone that I wanted is now the default ringtone.

For what it's worth, I've noticed that some ringtones do work, while others do not. All are .m4r files. But what I noticed is that if I try to play one with Quicktime Player on my Mac where my iTunes tones folder is located, I get a message saying that "QuickTime Player is not authorized to play (filename). In order to play this content, open it with iTunes." for the ringtones that don't work. For the ones that do work on my iPhoneX on iOS 11, I am able to play using QuickTime.

After spending several hours trying the various solutions offered here to no avail the only one that worked was to follow the advice here of buying the same ringtone from the Apple store to replace the one I'd made from the song I purchased through iTunes five years ago. I felt that my time was worth more to me than the $1.29 that it cost me to solve this problem. My guess is that I helped some Apple software engineer with their holiday bonus for implementing this money making idea. Merry and Happy to everyone!