iPhone: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

GarageBand Ringtones

If you have a Macintosh, then you can also create your own ringtones without paying anything to anyone—by using GarageBand, the music-editing program that comes on every new Mac (version '08 or later).

Start by building the ringtone itself. You can use GarageBand's Loops (prerecorded instrumental snippets designed to sound good together), for example, or sound you've recorded with a microphone. (There's nothing like the prerecorded sound of your spouse's voice barking out from the phone: "HONEY! PICK UP! IT'S ME!" every time your beloved calls.)

If you're not especially paranoid about record-company lawyers, you can also import any song at all into GarageBand—an MP3, AIFF, MIDI, or non-copy-protected AAC file, for example—and adapt a piece of it into a ringtone. That's one way for conscientious objectors to escape the $1-per-ringtone surcharge.

In any case, once you have your audio laid out in GarageBand tracks, press the letter C key. That turns on the Cycle strip—the yellow bar in the ruler shown below. Drag the endpoints of this Cycle strip to determine the length of your ringtone (up to 40 seconds long).

Tip

One feature that's blatantly missing on the iPhone is a "vibrate, then ring" option. That's where, when a call comes in, the phone first vibrates silently to get your attention and begins to ring out loud only if you still haven't responded after, say, 10 seconds. ...