Cleverboy at the macrumors forums has posted an easy way to get your own songs to sync to the iPhone for use as ringtones, with no 3rd party applications required.

Here’s the simple steps:

1. To add a ringtone to your iPhone, using Windows Explorer or the Finder just duplicate and rename any AAC file to be “M4R”, then double-click on it. This file will be added to your iTunes library automatically.
2. Now, click on your iPhone in iTunes, and go to the ringtone section. You should now see your new ringtone. If you want to be sure about the sync, feel free to click “selected ringtones” and check off the file explicitly, though this shouldn’t be required.
3. Now SYNC your phone. You’re Done!

Read on for a few further tips on making this work ..

Other Notes on making this work:

* If you have MP3 files, you need to convert them to AAC – this can be done by right-clicking them in the iTunes Library listing and choosing ‘Convert Selection to AAC’

* Copy that newly converted file to the desktop (or any location you like). Then rename it so that it’s extension is .m4r.  Then remove it from the iTunes library before double-clicking the file over on the desktop or wherever you copied it to – so that this newly renamed version of the file is the one that ends up in the \Ringtones folder.

This works nicely, even with the latest iTunes 7.4 – which has of course broken (for the time being) leading 3rd party ringtone makers like iToner and iPhoneRingToneMaker.

This process will add the whole song as a ringtone. If you want to be able to select sections of a song, you need to look towards using Audacity or GarageBand or a similar tool for this purpose.

Check out the original macrumors thread for more discussion on this topic:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=351495

Who knows whether Apple will attempt to ‘break’ this capability in a future update – but for now thanks to a very Cleverboy …

UPDATE: So, within less than a day, Apple brought out Version 7.4.1 of iTunes and it did indeed ‘break’ this method of getting custom ringtones onto the iPhone. But … as you would expect, there is already a new method for getting them onto the phone again. According to this Engadget post, you just need to follow the steps of the original method, and then:

If you’ve upgraded to 7.4.1

• Go back and re-rename that m4r file back to m4a. That’s it.
• Plug in your iPhone and that ringtone will be added to your syncable ringtones list — and it won’t pop up the error from before.

Related posts:

1. iPhone and 3rd Party Applications Support – Some Encouraging Words
2. iPhone – Custom Ringtones Via iTunes
3. Deal of the Day: Ringtones Maker for Windows Mobile
4. Apple WILL Allow 3rd Party Apps – Hurrah
5. Create your own Treo ringtones with MiniTones Via Lifehacker