This used to be a small obsession of mine, making ring tones. I used to use audacity to find a 40 second clip and then make an AAC version and rename it to m4r and it would just work with an iPhone.
Lately though I found a kind of hack way to do it with just iTunes tanks to wikiHow that involved using the start/stop feature of iTunes and then doing a rename. Saves having to download audacity:
- Find your tune in iTunes
- Choose Get Info/Options and then set the Start and Stop time where you want it. Ringtones have to be 40 seconds or less
- Right click on the tune and choose Create AAC Version
- Got back to the original tune and deselect Start and Stop (otherwise, you’ll never hear the full song again!)
- This will now create a separate clip that is just your 40 seconds
- Choose Reveal in Finder to get it and change its name to m4r (I normally then move it to a dedicated m4r directory, but that’s optional)
- Go back to iTunes and remove the short clip from Music
- Now double click on the m4r and it will be added in Ringtones section instead of Music
- When you sink, ask for all ringtones to be synced
