How to Make Custom Ringtones for a Windows Phone

Windows Phone Mango has been out for a few weeks now and it brings one feature that smartphone users absolutely love, which is custom ringtones. The bad news is that while Windows Phones running Mango can indeed use custom ringtones, making them, and getting them to play is not exactly easy to do. Here is a guide that will walk you through the process.

Getting started

There are some rather strange requirements for custom ringtones on Windows Phone. If these requirements are not met the ringtones you make will not work.

When you make a custom ringtone you have to make sure that it is no longer then 39 seconds. It cannot be bigger than one megabyte, and you cannot use any music that has DRM (digital rights management) embedded into it.

If you have been using Windows Phone for a while you probably already have Microsoft’s Zune software on your computer. If you do not have the latest version of Zune installed you can download it from this link. Once you have it downloaded go ahead and install it.

Audio editing software

In order for you to make your custom ringtone you will need to get some music editing software. The best software to use for making your ringtone is Audacity. Audacity is a free piece of software and you can download it here.

You can of course use any music editing software that you like, but Audacity is one of the best available.

Edit your music file

Once you have Audacity installed open the program. Once open locate the music file that you want to use and open it.

You will see that Audacity displays the song for you. Using the visual of the song that Audacity provides, find the part of the song that you want to be your ringtone, highlight that section and then delete the rest of the track.

Once you have completed the above steps you will have a nice 39 second loop of your chosen song. Save the edited music file as WMA, then import that track to your Zune music collection.

Make the ringtone

Once you have imported the file into the Zune software you will need to change the file into a ringtone. In the Zune library right click on the file that you imported from Audacity then click on edit. A new window will appear and you will see a new heading called “Edit Song Info”. Under the heading of Genre, click on the drop down menu and select the ringtone option, then click on save.

When you have saved the file as ringtone, connect your Windows Phone to your computer. Once the phone is connected you can drag the file to the phone icon so that you can sync the file to your phone.

Setting the ringtone

Congratulations. You have successfully created a new ringtone for your phone. If you want to set the new ringtone on your phone simply go into the setting menu, and then select the Ringtone and sounds option. Your new ringtone will appear at the top of the ringtones list under the heading of custom. Now you can rock out to your favorite tune every time your phone rings.


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