Since iPhone firmware 1.1.2 was released (read here) people have been hacking away at it to see if they can get it jailbroken, and well, they did. But, more on the jailbreaking in a minute first I want to mention to all of you a little something interesting about iPhone 1.1.2, custom ringtones.
If you remember back when ringtones were first introduced into iTunes and the iPhone there was a little workaround where if you took a 40 seconds or less AAC file, change the extension from .m4a to .m4r and double click it, the file would be added to iTunes as a ringtone. Well, with iTunes 7.3 this works again, but what is different now is that with iPhone firmware 1.1.2 they actually work!
So if you want custom ringtones on your iPhone without having to pay $15 for iToner, download iPhone firmware 1.1.2 here (to install iPhone firmware 1.1.2 option-click or shift-click “check for update” in iTunes and select the ipsw file downloaded) and make sure you have iTunes 7.3 installed. Here’s the steps in list form:
1. Encode your 40 seconds or less ringtone in AAC format.
2. Change the extension of the AAC file from .m4a to .m4r
3. Double click the .m4r file to add it to iTunes as a ringtone
4. Sync
5. Enjoy your custom ringtone
Now back to the whole jailbreaking story…
I have to be honest with you, I am not planning on jailbreaking my phone and actually don’t think that you should either. In my opinion you should just wait until February to get apps. But, I know that a lot of you would like to jailbreak your phone so…. read TUAW’s post about jailbreaking 1.1.2. The jailbreaking process takes about 10 minutes and does involve downgrading to 1.1.1.
Update: the limit for ringtones is actually 40.04 seconds.
the ringtones are added to the ringtone in itunes but when syncing it to my iphone, it doesn’t show in the “ringtone” section??? help
@lotust make sure you are using the latest version of iTunes and the firmware for your iPhone is up to date, if they are you need to make sure that your AAC file is less than 40 seconds long. After that, change the AAC files extension from .m4a to .m4r and then add it to your library, beyond that I can’t really help you too much.
How do I truncate the ringtone to 40 secs? Thanks Michael
add the ringtone as a regular .m4a audio file into itunes. Right click -> Get info, under the options tab change the start time and end time to select 40 seconds of the audio. After you change that check your iTunes yes preferences (edit -> preferences -> advanced -> importing) make sure that importing is set to AAC encoding. Right click on the audio file and choose convert selection to AAC.
Once you have that done drag the new 40 second file to your desktop, change the extension to .m4r, double click it and it should now work.
Thanks so much Michael!! It works beautifully! Shame that it’s only 40secs