How to create your own iPhone ringtones

Everybody (including myself) wants to have a nice ringtone for their iPhone. May be a latest song or music or even their own voice. Is there a way to create custom ringtones for free? Yes we do, it just takes few steps.
Searching for ringtones in internet, ringtone creators and your own voice ringtones are covered at the end of the post.

Create your Ringtones:
Step 1: Open iTunes
Step 2: Select the song you want
Step 3: Right-click and select “Get Info”

Step 4: Select the “Options” tab and set the “start and end time”. And click OK.
     iPhone has a restriction to keep ringtones for 30 seconds. You can choose any 30 seconds in the song. Listen to the song couple of times and decide your 30 secs or less.

Step 5: Right-click the song and select “Create AAC version” and wait for few seconds. (pic 3)
    iTunes will create 30 seconds AAC version. Now you have the full song and the ringtone.

Step 6: Right-click the ringtone and select Show in Windows explorer. (Refer pic 1 and pic 3)
Step 7: You will be able to see the song with m4a extension.
    If you don’t see the extension, Google and disable hide extensions options

Step 8: Now copy the m4a file and save in different folder (where you planning to keep all ring tones)
Step 9: Rename the copied file extension to m4r (pic 5)
    Click Yes / OK in the pop up window

Step 10: Double click the m4r file and it will automatically open in iTunes in Ringtones section.
Step 11: Sync your iPhone with iTunes enabling the ringtone option. All your ringtones will be included in your iPhone
Step 12: Right-click the your 30 second ringtone in iTunes and select “Delete”
    Choose “Remove” and “Move to Recycle bin” in the next options. This is to clear the 30 second version. You don’t want to have that in you library and disturb during playback. And also right-click the original song, select “Get Info” → “Options” → deselect / un-check the start and end time. This is because iTunes will keep this in memory and play the song for 30 secs.

Your own voice as ringtone:
    1) Use the voice memo app to record your singing or phrase or quote
    2) Sync your iphone
    3) Follow steps 1 to 13 and you have the ringtone with your own voice

Searching the web for ringtones:
    You can search iPhone ringtones in internet but sometimes they are not with good quality or not what you expected. The sites that offer ringtones may not be reliable some times.

Ringtone creators:

There are 100’s of apps to create ringtones directly in iPhone. All they are doing is creating the m4r version directly in your phone. Still you have to follow copy that file to different folder and double click the m4r file. Here is a quick demo for one of the app: Ringtones