Custom Ringtones have not seen much love from Apple over the last few releases of macOS and iOS. Now, with iTunes replaced in macOS Catalina, there is no clear cut way to figure out the various syncing options for custom ringtones. In this short guide, we will explore how you can still transfer your own custom ringtones and use them on your iPhone in iOS 13.
Related:
- New Podcasts App on macOS Catalina, Here’s what you should know
- 21 Apple Mail tips and tricks you may not have known for iOS and macOS
- Customize your iPhone ringtones – Convert mp3 to m4r
- No More iTunes. How to use Finder in macOS Catalina to Sync and Restore iPhone
- How to Use Custom Ringtones And Tones After Updating to iTunes 12.7
No ‘Tones’ section in the Finder App on macOS Catalina
Since iTunes has been replaced in macOS Catalina with the new Music app and sync features in the Finder app, the process of moving custom ringtones from your Mac to iPhone has become difficult.
The new Sync feature in the Finder App does not have a section for ‘Tones’.
Furthermore, when you explore the library files for music, there is no ‘Tones’ folder anymore.
You can browse your Music and iTunes libraries on macOS Catalina by following these steps:
- Open Finder App on your MacBook
- Click on ‘Go’ at the top and choose ‘Go To Folder..’
- Type ‘~/Music’ without the quotes to open the Music library on your Mac
- Your GarageBand, iTunes and Music folders are located here.
If you use multiple iTunes libraries, be mindful that Apple recently provided a white paper in which they called out that multiple iTunes libraries are not currently supported in beta versions of macOS Catalina but the feature will be added later.
We have tried moving the custom ringtone from GarageBand on our Mac to the folders here but we were not successful in syncing it with the iPhone.
The old process of dragging a custom ringtone and dropping it to the iPhone in iTunes didn’t seem to work for us anymore. Â We are hopeful Apple will add functionality to do this very soon.
How to Transfer Custom Ring tones from your macOS Catalina
The workaround that we used in order to transfer custom ringtones out of MacBook to iPhone is by leveraging the iCloud drive / Files app option along with GarageBand app for iOS. GarageBand app has been enabled to use iCloud in settings.
The basic idea is to share the custom ringtone from your MacBook with your iPhone running GarageBand. Once it is available in iOS GarageBand, we export it as Ringtone to the iPhone’s contact app.
Lets’ get started and put a little elbow grease to this workaround!
Send the custom ringtone file (.m4a , .m4r) from your MacBook to yourself via email or use the Finder app on your MacBook.
Please follow the steps below to transfer these custom ringtones onto your iPhone running iOS 13.
- Tap on the ringtone attachment from your email
- Tap on the Share icon at the bottom left of your screen
- Choose ‘Save to Files’
- Move the downloaded ringtone into the folder ‘GarageBand File Transfer’
- Move the ringtone to GarageBand on iOS folder on your iPhone.
- Next, Open GarageBand App on your iPhone and tap on the ‘+’ icon
- On the next screen, choose ‘Audio Recorder’ as the Tracks type
- Tap on Tracks at the top of your screen
- Next, Tap on the loop icon at the top right corner of your screen
- The ringtone that you moved earlier via Files is now available here.
- Touch and hold the ring tone and drag it as a track
- Your Ringtone is imported in as a track
- Tap on the downward arrow icon and select ‘My Songs’
- Your ringtone is saved automatically as ‘My Song’
- Tap on Select and then choose ‘My Song’
- Choose ‘Share’ from the options
- Here tap on ‘Ringtone’ and then choose ‘Export’
- Select ‘Use Sound as..’ and choose the type of ringtone you would like and tap Done
- Choose between standard Ringtone, Text or assign directly to Contact here.
- Your Ringtone is now exported and you can access it from your Contacts App
How to Assign custom Ringtone to a Contact in iOS 13
This process has not changed in iOS 13. Open your Contacts app on your iPhone and select the contact that you want the new custom ringtone to be assigned to.
- Tap on ‘Edit’
- Scroll down to ‘Ringtone’ and tap there
- Choose the custom ringtone that you exported from GarageBand
- Tap on ‘Done’ at the top right corner of the screen
You can also use this process to change the default ‘text tone’ of any contact on your iPhone.
Tip: If you are working to create your own custom ringtones in Garage Band on macOS Catalina, when you are ready to export the ringtone project out of macOS Catalina, click on Share > Project to GarageBand for iOS and the ring tone will be readily available on your iPhone when you open up GarageBand.
We hope that this step by step workaround was helpful to you. Although this process works great in transferring out custom ringtones from macOS Catalina or the ones you download from the web, it is probably not the ideal solution when it comes to transferring a batch full of custom ringtones.
Feel free to chime in with some of your favorite tips and tricks when it comes to transferring or syncing custom ringtones from your MacBook.
Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.
In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.
Related Posts:
Taking Photo But iPhone Says Storage is Full- iMessage Not Working iOS 12? Fix Message App Problems
- Should I sign up for Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program?
- Common iOS 11 Problems, How-To Fix
- How To Fix Messages and iMessage Problems in iOS 11
- How to fix Apple Music not working on iPhone / iPad
- Error Occurred Installing iOS 12 on iPhone or iPad,…
- Who's Afraid of Losing Data? Comprehensive Guide to…
I don’t see the share option!! when I click on step 15 it just opens up the track again and no options to share!!! I am on ios 12 still tho
It works, if it doesn’t work for you just try to follow the instructions.
hi guys – thank you so much.
I actually diverted from the process by simply recording my custom ringtones with the audio recorder function in Garageband, playing through the speakers of my mac pro.
voila. endless supply of ringtones – mine happens to be old star trek sounds that by virtue of what they are, already sound “old” so the room tone recording quality in my case did not bother me.
a great help – thanks again!
Just connect iPhone, open this iPhone in finder, and drag drop files to this window
OMG! I just tried this and it worked.
This also worked for me and it was super simple. Just drag drop m4r files to the iphone in finder, then press sync. They are already in your ringtones on your phone, and I had checked “managed music manually” in case it erased the older ones
thanks a lot. really helpful article
Excellent, thanks!
Just drag and drop into the Finder window doesn’t work for me, the songs (m4r) don’t appear in ringtones in my iPhone.
All you have to do is connect your iPhone/iPad to your Mac, open Finder, select your iPhone/iPad, then drag-and-drop ringtone files into the Finder window and they appear in your ringtones.
Uh, no. It doesn’t
Sorry!! Yes it does!!!
This was incredibly helpful. Thank you.
Actually I found out that if you have access to an .m4r file, you can just drag it onto the iTunes finder window and it’ll show up in the Tones section on your iPhone
Just drag and drop m4r file into the phone’s finder window (header section with your phone name) and click apply. It seems nothing happened but you can see ring is added when you check your phone.
Thx Thx Thx …. !!!!!!!
Is this applicable for Catalina? i (somehow) was able to move one m4r file so that it appears as a ringtone…i’m trying to move another and it’s not working. My iphone finder window has tabs with info on each tab, is this where you’re dropping?
Yes it does, as of today 1/18. Whatever finder window whatever tab, as long as the plus appears when you hover over from dragging, then sync. It should show up in .your ringtones 🙂
Try Ringer – Ringtone Maker on Apple App store from pixelresearchlabs.com It’s super easy to use.
You no longer get direct export to iTunes but you can save the .m4r file to your desktop and drag it to your iPhone in Finder.
There is also a iOS version I just found out but you’ll have to Airdrop the file to a Mac to get it to the iPhone in Finder.