You can create ringtones for iPhone on your mac by following the steps below.
- Install iShowU Audio Capture from here. This gives you the ability to redirect audio playing on your macbook to GarageBand or other applications.
- Go to System Preferences…Audio and set the Output to be ‘iShowU Audio Capture’.
- Record the audio you want to turn into a ringtone using GarageBand or another application. In the case of GarageBand you can create a new Project and choose ‘Record Using a Microphone or line input’. Although you won’t hear what you’re recording, you’ll see the levels for the track move up and down.
- Go back to ‘System Preferences…Audio’ on the mac and change the Output back to ‘Internal Speakers’. Then go ahead and edit the Audio you recorded in step 3.
- Export/save to disk the audio as AAC. Note: the total length has to be 30 sec or under. Don’t use any special characters in the file name.
- In Finder, locate the file and change the file extension from m4v to m4r.
- In iTunes, make sure your iPhone is connected (via wifi or cable), and under your device there should be a submenu item called ‘Tones’. Click on that item to open it.
- Drag and drop the m4r file from Finder to the right-hand side of iTunes. It should then be listed if successful.
- on the iPhone go to settings…Sounds…then tap on ‘Ringtone’. You should then see your new ringtone listed at the top under the ‘RINGTONES’ section. Select it, and you’re done!
Note: I’ve tried this once so far. It works, but I have some issues with the quality of the audio in the ringtone. Need to figure that out…