iOS 5 Tutorial: How to Create and Use a Custom Text Tone in 10 Easy Steps

Other than the 10 prominent, most notable features that Apple showcased at WWDC this Summer, there is yet another that kind of sneakily made its way into iOS 5; previously, you only had the ability to create custom ringtones, but now users can create their own custom text alert tones.id="more-22464">

Now this is pretty cool. Rather than the regular tri-tone sound that was played when you received a text message, you can now create your own custom tones or select from a long list of Apple’s tones.

Similar to the process of creating your own ringtones through iTunes, you’ll be able to make text tones. What you’ll need to do:

1. Find a sound clip that is roughly 2-5 seconds in length – you don’t want anything too long especially if you receive texts a lot because that could become pretty obnoxious./> 2. You can either get a clip from somewhere or take part of an already existent song (right click on song, get info, edit start/end times to desired time, click ok, then continue to step 4/> 3. You need to get your clip into iTunes and then right click on it and create an AAC version of the song. This will create a duplicate, visually, in iTunes/> 4. Right click on the song/clip and click the option ‘Locate in Finder’ or ‘Open in Explorer’ for Mac users and Windows users, respectively./> 5. Change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r/> 6. Delete the AAC version that previously made, set the start/end times back to normal if you used a song./> 7. Double click on the .m4r version, and it should open in iTunes unless iTunes isn’t your standard player. If not, drag the file into your library./> 8. Your clip is ready to be synced./> 9. After syncing, navigate to Settings>Sounds>Text Tone and then select your clip/> 10. Voila!

If you’re just too lazy to do any of the above, you can always just shell out $0.99 and buy text tones, which is also a new feature; if you notice, on the same page that has the list of tones, there is also a button that will take you to iTunes and give you the option to purchase a large variety of 2-5 second sound clips.