Setting custom ringtones have become easy in IOS26

I think it's safe to say that the majority of us have been wanting something like this for years.

Do you know how long I have wanted to be able to have my own custom ringtones? Since the moment I got my first IOS device! I definitely wish they added this feature sooner, but boy am I happy it's coming now!

This, along with just being able to access the contents stored on an iPhone as if it was a USB mass storage device, is one of those extremely basic features that Apple has been ridiculous preventing users from enjoying for many years for no reason other than pure greed. Another one that I mentioned a couple of months ago is the lack of support for USB UVC cameras on iPhone when they are supported on iPad, so I just spent over 700€ on a cellular iPad Mini, which is a device that I don't otherwise care about, in order to take advantage of that functionality from a mobile device.

This option shows up on the Share sheet photos or other file types as well as audio files. Is this simply a bug or is there anything I'm missing out?

This could be simply the way they coded this feature into the share sheet interface. Either to give us more freedom as to win and where we can introduce a new ringtone, or because somebody did a sloppy job of implementing this feature. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Or videos? Well, maybe. Images? Most likely not. So I think it's the latter (i.e., it's not intentional).

It’s amazing to me that we can’t do it for alarms. You can set it for one alarm. But you can’t change the default alarm sound for all of them.

had this for years. Awesome update, thank you for the post! :) though I'm happier than ever to be on iphone given the recent events...

It took Apple long enough to do that for people who want it. I’m glad that’s finally an option for you guys. I literally just don’t bother trying to even create any kind of audio files or whatever because I just don’t have the patience to do it. I’m glad all you guys do. I just use the stock ringtones. I use ones in the classic section actually. Same thing goes for the alert. Sounds as well. I just never found any of the newer ones to be loud enough. Even when I had the volume at 100% they weren’t loud enough. Even when I was wearing my hearing aids, it was the same issue. Without my hearing aids, it was worse. But then again I just got hearing aids as of June 16 of this year, so that’s a pretty new experience for me as well. That’s really cool that they finally made this easier for you. All you guys don’t want it.

I'm constantly making ringtones and was hoping the process of using them would eventually become easier on iOS!

I mean it'd be hilarious if nothing else lol. Imagine the phone trying to play a sound only to go nope, error, it's an image... Woops It could just tell you invalid file when you try to set the image as a ringtone, but if you found a bug, well hey cool, go report it.

Well, just kidding.

Yeah, if you did try to make an image a ring John he could just have a haptic grab presentation. It’s honestly not a bad idea. I know you said you were kidding, but honestly, that would be kind of cool. Especially for somebody who’s like no hard hearing he needs more vibrations and stuff like that. Honestly wouldn’t be a bad idea. Just out of curiosity, though, for people who have tried to customize their incomes if you have the synchronized pattern on for your ringtone, does that work for ones that aren’t Apple ringtones?

Someone do a podcast on it for all to listen and learn how to do so. Long live cats.

What if you don't want to set a custom ringtone for your main tone but do want to assign one to a single contact? From how I'm reading this is implemented, it sounds like you would have to set a custom ringtone first, then assign that to the contact you want it to apply to, then change your main ringtone back.

Looks like I have some guide updating to do. It only mentions GarageBand at this time of this comment.

This feature sounds cool. I currently have iOS 26 RC. How would this work if I used ringtones from an app like Zedge? Can I share the Zedge tone to the files app, select the audio file from the files app, and use as ringtone? This is a much smoother and easier option than going through garage band. A demo podcast would be appreciated. Tia. :)

So what you do is with the audio file paste it in a app called music to ringtones then adjust the length
Can't be longer than 30 seconds.
Then double tap on save then garage band file and then go to use as ringtone
But before that a good idea would be to save that in your files app and rename it and and then from the files app swipe down till you hear share and then use as ringtone.
Hope this helps.

You actually can change the default ringtone for alarms. It's just a process is all.
Do the following:
1. Activate Siri, and say, "clear all alarms". This will get Siri to erase all of your alarms in your clock app.
2. Activate Siri again, and say something simple like, "wake me up at noon" or "wake me up at 11 AM". The time does not really matter, so use whatever's clever for you.
3. Open your clock app, and go to your alarms tab. Edit that new alarm you just created, and change its ringtone to whatever you want.
4. Open your clock app again, go to the alarms tab, and manually create a new alarm.

You'll find that any alarm you create manually, will have the ringtone you selected in step 3 above.

Admittedly, in earlier versions of iOS, alarms created through Siri, after doing steps one through three above, would automatically have the new ringtone, but it seems Apple remove that functionality, so this is the only way to have new alarms keep the new default that you select.

HTH.

If you have an M4A, you can actually change the file extension so that it reads m4r, and it will still work. TLDR: It's only used as a distinguisher externally, they are not separate file types internally.
It works because .m4a and .m4r files use the same AAC audio format , and the different extensions are only used by Apple to distinguish ringtones (.m4r) from regular audio files (.m4a). Renaming just changes how the system interprets the file, not its contents.

Thanks for clarifying. I can't test it now But I will have a play maybe this weekend. Right now I am using reflection pop as my default ringtone.