Why can I use a song as a alarm but not a ring tone

You can use any song in your iTunes library as a ring tone, but you have to edit it first. You need to crop it to 30s segment or shorter and change the file type. A simple web search will turn up numerous sites with step by step instructions about how to edit any song into a ringtone segment in either iTunes or GarageBand.

There are also apps that will edit songs right in the iPhone. GarageBand for iOS also works - https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/10/iphone-ipad-custom-ringtones-make-ringtone-garage band/

I’m not missing anything. An alarm has no length limit. A ring tone does (30 second segment or less). So you cannot just select and use any sound file that is more than 30s for a ring tone.

But you need to choose which 30s segment out of an entire song is going to form the repetitive ring tone. An alarm just plays the entire song from the beginning.

If you’d like that reality to change, send feedback to Apple. Or code, or find someone to code an App to just take any song and autocrop the first 30s of it for a ringtone. There’s nothing stopping anyone from producing such an App. For all I know, one of the dozen or more ringtone maker apps in the App Store already offer that?

I have the same question as Cory and sorry, that reply doesn't anwer the question. Let me expand on it. I can set my alarms to use a any song on my phone as my alarm tone with out creating a ringtone from the song. If the iPhone is able to do that with the sound the alarm makes, why can't the phone use any song as a ringtone for phone calls and texts without going through some long process with an app and/or audio editing software or purchasing them already made?

Thank you for attempting to write a thorough answer but I believe that you have also slightly misinterpreted the original poster. I have also wondered on many occasions the very thing I believe the OP is asking.

We are both aware that there are apps and work arounds to take clips from songs on your phones and then via syncing get those to appear in the tones folder. However, in case you aren’t aware, whenever you set an alarm you can simply just chose from any song on your phone without any workaround or app needed.

So if this is possible, why cant we just do the same with ring tones etc (obviously wouldn’t be able to select a clip but would still be handy).

Hi

Go to iTunes enter tones you will find plenty of tones.

Cheers

Brian 🇬-1F1E7;

Hello CoryC777,

You can set a ringtone as an alarm by going to Clock > Alarm > Edit > choose the alarm you want to edit > Sound. From here, scroll down to find the normal iOS ringtones which you can now select for your alarm. Hope this answered your question!

Thanks Michael. I think the confusion (for me at least) was that although you provided ways of making tones, I didn’t understand WHY it worked natively for alarms and not ringtones. I presumed the iPhone would just play the song until voicemail kicked in or they hung up, it might have just looped the first part of the song. Much appreciated.