How to add multiple ringtones to your iPhone?
Learn how easy it is to add multiple custom ringtones to your iPhone.
Earlier we have walked you through how to add custom ringtones to your iPhone. On that post we demonstrated adding just one ringtone to your iPhone. It was not intentional but happened to show only one ringtone as an example. From the many comments on that post it’s clear that many of you have trouble adding multiple ringtones to your iPhone.
In this post I’ll walk you through how to add multiple ringtones to your iPhone. The process is quite simple and is pretty closer to the way you add single ringtone. There are couple of things that you might need to make sure (which I’ll mention later).
First, follow the instructions on the how to add a custom ringtone to your iPhone post to add the second ringtone to your iPhone. Do as many as you want but make sure you can see multiple ringtones on the Ringtones section of your iTunes application. Follow the steps on that post until it asks you to Sync. Before you sync your iPhone you need to make sure couple of things.
Click on the iPhone item on the left side of iTunes and make sure the “Manually mange music and videos” option is unchecked.
Then on the “Ringtones” tab, make sure the “Sync Ringtones” option is checked and then the “Selected ringtones” option is selected. Also, make sure to choose more than one ringtones that you would like to sync.
Also, one another thing to make sure might be to keep your ringtones music length to less than 30 seconds. Apple claims to allow up to 30 seconds but I would try to keep it as small as possible. The sample ringtones used for this demonstration are 9 seconds and 12 seconds.
At this point of time, you are good to sync your iPhone. Once sync completes you should be able to see multiple ringtones on your iPhone if you go into “Settings” > “Sounds” > “Ringtone”.
As you must have realized adding multiple ringtones to your iPhone is not that complicated. There are couple of things that you need to make sure and follow the above instructions. I’m sure some of you might run into issues doing this, if you do please let us know in comments.
April 4th, 2010 at 3:08 am
Hi, I have tried to add multiple ringtones to my iphone before and it was successful. I had about 8 ringtones in my phone. however i tried adding another 6 ringtones and i failed. i was unable to add the new ringtones when i sync my phone. all 14 ringtones appear in my itunes ringtone section but when i sync it, only the old 8 ringtones appear. the new 6 ringtones refuse to appear in my phone.
I tried to delete the aac of the new ringtone in the music folder but this didnt work. I also delete the old ringtones so that i have sufficient space for new ringtones, this didnt work too. please help!
July 3rd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Feeling clueless as to why more than one is not showing up on the phone.
It looks like this should work, since in iTunes all the ring tones are listed under the iphone (devices on the left) after syncing and all are checked, but still only one is listed under "custom" in ringtones on my 3GS phone.
Please help.
July 4th, 2010 at 9:19 am
I can only have one ringtone in the Ringtones section of iTunes. How do I go about this problem?
July 4th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Please make sure that multiple ringtones show up on the iPhone section of your iTunes. You need to check the ringtones that you wanted to sync on that tab. Once you do there is no reason why it shouldn't show up on your iPhone. Please give that a try and please let us know. Hope it helps.
July 5th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
They all show up in the iPhone section of iTunes, but only one shows under "custom" when I check the phone.
If I uncheck that particular ringtone in iTunes and resync, then one of the others shows up under "custom" instead.
All the ringtones seem to be on the phone, but only one random one is accessible.
Is it limited to only one because I'm using ver 3.1.3?
Thanks for your expertise!
July 5th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Hmmm…that's weird…I did have 3.1.3 at some point when I had multiple ringtones on my iPhone (or may very well be when I wrote this article). if you can see multiple ringtones checked on the iPhone section of iTunes and you hit Sync on the same tab it should all be there. There is no setting on the iPhone that prevents multiple ringtones from showing up. At least I'm not aware of it. Also, give the "selected ringtones" option on the Ringtones tab of iPhone section of iTunes a try.
July 5th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Finally got it!
I was dragging the ringtones into iTunes to add them to my library instead of doubleclicking on them. When I double clicked on the files to add them to iTunes, it worked.
Although the ringtones all showed as synced before, I think it was something to do with iTunes linking to the files instead of having them copied into my library before syncing.
Thanks for the help!
July 6th, 2010 at 1:07 am
I do remember of just dragging and adding it to iTunes. But then that was on my Mac; don't know if that wouldn't work on Windows if you happen to have Windows. Anyways, thanks for the follow up comment and I'm sure double-clicking might help some of our friends here who have trouble seeing multiple ringtones on their iPhone even though they can see it on iTunes. I'm glad that it worked for you finally!
July 12th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Hats off dude, though now I need to be more cautious while connecting iPhone as its on Auto Sync..
Any suggestions for that?
September 9th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
i can't believe none of you figured it out yet. after playing around for at least an hour i figured out it only works if you HAVE MANUALLY MANAGE MUSIC AND VIDEOS UNTICKED!
http://www.demogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/0… <– RIGHT THERE CLEARLY SHOWN!
i have about 15 custom ringtones on my iphone 4.
September 9th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
oh and you can then tick the manually manage music and videos back on and the ring tones will stay. only problem is if you wanna add a new one in the future you have to start all over and all your stuff will be wiped so back it up
September 13th, 2010 at 9:25 am
What Eureka mentioned, works!
Thanks
October 1st, 2010 at 1:19 am
hi i am using the latest iTunes and while i can add ringtones to iTunes, it doesn't appear in my iPhone 4 after sync… any advice?
October 1st, 2010 at 2:05 am
hi i tried ur method it juz dun appear in my phone…
October 5th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Marc – please make sure to have the "manually manage music" option checked on your iPhone Home settings. Hope it helps.
November 7th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
I only managed to get three on then wasnt able to add anymore to add a fourth i had to undo all of the setting required to add the first three and then add the fourth and now am not able to add anymore
December 5th, 2010 at 6:31 am
i have seriously no idea what is happening with my phone.. i have checked and double checked that all the settings are correct and readded all the ringtones through the double clicking method yet i still can't see them all.. help?
December 5th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Olivia – please make sure that you have the "manually manage ringtones" option checked on your iPhone's Home tab on iTunes. That should do it.
December 13th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
this is all great – but when i selected my multiple ringtones to sync, it advised me that it was going to delete all my apps and its data from my iphone. great
December 13th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
not only that but the ringtones didnt even upload to the phone… so now i have no ringtones and no apps… cheering =(
December 15th, 2010 at 5:10 am
Thanks a million! This worked like magic!
January 4th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Hey guys after playing around a bit I finally figured it out myself. This works for those who were able to see only one ringtone under >Sounds on the phone:
1. Always only sync your phone as most including demogeek have recommended (Especially when you're using multiple devices on the same iTunes library).
2. The only option that should be selected on the Summary page should be "Sync only selected songs & videos"
3. Follow all the other steps by demogeek included in this thread.
4. Just to be on the safe side just use the bare ringtones without any tags whatsoever.
(remove song-artist name, album art etc)
5. After syncing make sure the ringtones show up in the iPhone Ringtones window as well.
*iPhone 4 (My first iDevice acquired 4 days ago) (Running iOS 4.2.1 with iTunes 10.1.1 on Windows Vista <-Could it get crappier?)
March 15th, 2011 at 10:15 pm
Won't this delete all songs that are on my phone that are not in my itunes library?
April 20th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Wish you could use multiple ring tones.. .se different ones for different people.. anyone know how to do that?
May 17th, 2011 at 12:52 am
yeah, thanks everyone for the help! and thank you coz that double clicking thing was the most useful advice ever!
June 4th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Also found troubles selecting all the custom tones in iTunes then running the sync – found by unchecking all but the top one then running the sync and then checking another to have two total on the list selected then rerunning the sync and so on down the list until all five of my custom tones shoes up one after another after each sync and each addition to the list.
June 6th, 2011 at 5:07 am
New insight on Ringtone upload. Much easier method. Convert Audio files to AAC / M4A no time limit necessary. Rename to m4r and then use an Application called iFun-Box (Windows) to copy all the files into the Ringtones folder with this app.
June 6th, 2011 at 5:13 am
@Bruce: You can use different ringtones for different contacts. You can assign a ringtone to a particular contact when you edit that contact.
@Johnny: Yes technically it will delete everything on the phone. But once you have synced with iTunes then syncing you will find is the best and easiest option. If you want to avoid this technique try the new one I posted above
June 7th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Thank you @Anand!
June 8th, 2011 at 9:44 am
Hey DG, no problem! I followed your advice the first time and it worked fine except for the time limit. So I had to find an alt coz most ringers are at least 1′ 10″ long. Your site’s great and it’s great that you share your knowledge.
March 27th, 2012 at 9:58 am
i think the problem with cases some showed only a few despite the list they had in itunes are longer, are because the Conversion ACC file in Music are not deleted. Once you import the data file into ringtones, the duplicate in Music file must be deleted first. Which only will allow iphone to detect the whole songs. i got mine full. 10 custom ringtones. din know it had a limit.