iTunes 12.7 will not import my .m4r ringtones!

To delete an existing tone file on the device access the device first via the small icon at the top, then select Tones in the sidebar, highlight the item you want to delete, then press backspace or delete on your keyboard. Again the device may need to be in manually managed mode for this to be successful.

tt2

Horrible.

What is the correct way be in "manually managed mode"?

I selected this and sync run and delete all from my iphone ... ****.

Why does run sync - this means automatically for me ... and not manually.

Having ticked the Manually manage... box and clicked Apply or OK without syncing, you should have been able to remove unwanted tones. You could then have unticked that box, applied, and synced, so that your device was updated without removing the existing media. And yes, this is horrible. 😮

tt2

Plot thickens... have tried all the suggestions (i only have "manually manage videos" for an option in iTunes), and these are .m4r ringtones with proper file associations and permissions. Even more frustrating, I just connected 3 different iphones, one iPhone 8 and two other iPhone X's, and selected "trust" for all three, and voila, the ringtones transferred perfectly. However, when I re-plug in my iPhone X, no joy. I reset the "trust" settings (on my iPhone Settings/General/Reset/Reset Location and privacy), deleted my iPhone backups from Application Support, and from preferences, restarted my laptop, my iPhone, plugged in, reselected "trust" and "allow changes..." settings, but STILL no joy. What is going on? I've confirmed my iOS is exactly the same as the other two iPhone X's.

So just to reiterate:

I can copy the ringtones to other iPhones with no problem, just not mine. It's as if my iPhone file structure is write protected... (this is what made me think to reset the trust settings).

The way I have gotten it to work in 12.7.2 is to right click on the file in windows explorer (if you're using Windows), go back to iTunes and right click on the Tones icon and select paste. The tone will appear in on the phone and auto-sync. Hope this helps.

I tried doing that over and over again but my ringtones show up on the tones folder with the dotted circles around them but they dont show up on the phone even after synchronising it, any idea what the issue could be here?

I have tried every single method so far, to no avail.

The main issue I seem to have is that in itunes 12.7.3, on a Win 10 computer with a new iphone 8 with a backup restored from an iphone 6, is that nothing shows up in the tones section in relation to the ring tones that are already on my phone after restoring from the last backup on my old phone. the grey dotted circle pops up in every instance when i try to add a ring tone, even a new one that isn't on the phone. I restored my new phone to factory settings, tried adding the tones back on and it worked. But as soon as I restored the backup, the tones were overwritten and no longer responsive in itunes. In addition, once deleting the tones since the entire list now had the circle with exclamation point, itunes doesnt recognize the backed up tones on the phone that the backup replaced the freshly synced tones with .

So, I can't refresh the current tones on the phone and show up in itunes, can't delete and re-sync them, and itunes won't acknowledge they are even on my phone while still showing up in the settings menu and functioning fine.

Oh! Also regarding GarageBand... because the songs are super old they cannot be used in the app. The app is saying “the songs are protected or need to be saved locally to this iPhone.” They are in my iTunes library and are on my iPhone. I’m guessing it’s because the song wasn’t purchased through the App Store it doesn’t work?

Nope, the key word there was protected. Tracks bought from the iTunes Store before 2009, or downloaded as part of the Apple Music service are likely be to subject to DRM and cannot be used as source files for ringtones.

tt2

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

Thank you! I am very glad that I found this post. I was beginning to question my intelligence. lol

Glad it helped. 🙂

There are some other wrinkles for Windows users and removing unwanted tones that are covered in Create and manage ringtones in iTunes.

tt2

Once you've found the way to add tones to the device if some of the files that you try to add are rejected then it suggests there is something wrong with the format of them.

tt2

So anyway, based upon my experience, the iTunes program and/or iOS seem to be fairly messed up at least with regard to .m4r files and ringtone management.

thank you so muchhhhhhhh 🙂