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This guide is outdated. Check the Media forum for more current info.

How to add a custom ringtone (for intel Mac users only...for now)

by: exNavy

Before I get into the instructions, I must give credit where credit is due. Because of the hard work of a couple people, "geohot", "nightwatch" and "ziel" in particular, and the rest of the #iphone-dev crew, we have two programs and a method that make this possible. The programs are called jailbreak and iPhoneInterface. Original instructions for how to do this were provided to me by "JavaCoderEx" which I then redrafted and illustrated. I'd also like to thank the following people for helping me add the instructions that allow sync ability to remain unbroken: "chews", "Christian", "lunatixcoder", "pdb" and "TkN" for pointing out this method, explaining it to me, and for tech checking these instructions numerous times to make sure they were right. This obviously makes this modification so much more worth it. Before, people gave up the ability to sync just to have a ringtone!

Custom ringtones are one of the biggest requests by people that want to modify their iPhone to make it unique. This page will teach you how to add your own files to the iPhone to use as a ringtone. For those of you PPC Mac users out there, for whatever reason the universal binary of jailbreak does not work. The only thing preventing Windows users from doing this is the lack of someone to write the interface program.

Warning

• Following these instructions may brick (kill) your iPhone making it completely unusable. If your iPhone becomes unresponsive to restoration via iTunes, then you may have to seek repair or replacement through Apple Inc., or AT&T. However, everyone we know of has been able to restore their iPhone fully by using iTunes. Pay careful attention to the instructions here. We are NOT responsible for your results. You are assuming all risks. These instructions were completed successfully by many people before being posted here, but we cannot account for everyone's individual computer system configurations or ability to follow directions.

Step 1. Make sure your iPhone is docked and fully charged.

Step 2. From iTunes, make sure you have a backup of your phone and all settings (if you want to keep them). Simply connect the iPhone to your computer and iTunes will sync your iPhone. Automatically backed-up information includes text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, certain network settings, and other preferences.

Step 3. Quit iTunes. Don't just minimize it, shut it down. If you have the iTunes helper open, you must quit that as well. Not having these two items quit, is causing people some problems out there.

Step 4. Turn on the iPhone.

Step 5. Download the software restore file from Apple. Click here. Once you have downloaded the file, rename the extension (.ipsw) to (.zip). Your browser may just decompress the file for you and leave a folder called iPhone1,1_1 on your desktop.

Step 6. Create a folder called phonedmg in your home folder.

Step 7. Place the software restore files you downloaded from Apple (the iPhone1,1_1 folder) into the phonedmg folder. Do not place the whole folder in here, just what's in the folder.

Step 8. Download the "jailbreak" program here. Put these files into the phonedmg folder.

Step 9. Download the iPhoneInterface (v 0.3.3) program here. Put these files into the phonedmg folder.

Step 10. Go to your Applications folder and then go into the Utilities folder and find the program called Terminal. You should move this to your dock for easier access.

Step 11. Start Terminal and type: cd phonedmg Then press the enter key.

You'll see you are now in the phonedmg directory where all of your files that you downloaded earlier should be.

Step 12. Type: ./jailbreak Then press the enter key. You should see the text "Looking for iPhone..." If you don't, then you did something wrong. When you run jailbreak with the iPhone on you'll get this:

It will next say:

Step 13. Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button for a full 25 seconds.

The iPhone will restart in recovery mode. At this point the iTunes program will open, so close it.

Go back to the Terminal window running jailbreak and press and hold the CTRL key while pressing the C key. You have to do this because jailbreak tells you to go into recovery mode, and doesn't give you a prompt to kill the shell process. (Note if you have iTunes 7.3.1 it won't launch automatically when you go into recovery mode. Jailbreak will continue normally and you won't have to use CTRL C).

At the new prompt type ./jailbreak Then press the enter key. A few additional lines of text will appear as the iPhone is modified.

Step 14. Now copy your ringtone to the phonedmg folder. Make sure the file is in .m4a format (I've heard .mp3 also works but they must be created from within iTunes - some special encoding method?) In this example I've put the song myringtone.m4a here.

Step 15. Back in the Terminal type: ./iPhoneInterface Then press the enter key.

Step 16. Now type mkdir /var/root/Library/Ringtones Then press the enter key.
Now type: cd /var/root/Library/Ringtones Then press the enter key.

Step 17. Next type: putfile myringtone.m4a Then press the enter key. Note if you want to delete a ringtone type: rmdir myringtone.m4a (or whatever your file name is).

  Then press the enter key.

Now in order to not lose sync ability with iTunes we must replace the Services.plist file with the original one from iTunes.

Step 18. Download the original Services.plist file <a href="http://www.modmyi.com/files/Services.plist from here.] You can also get this from the decrypted 39.dmg file, but I won't explain this here.

Step 19. Put the Services.plist file inside the phonedmg folder.

Step 20. Type: cd /System/Library/Lockdown Then press the enter key.

Step 21. Type: putfile Services.plist Then press the enter key.

Step 22. Type: exit Then press the enter key.

Step 23. Turn off the iPhone then turn it back on. Go to: Settings, Sounds, Ringtone, and select your new ringtone.

If you find the iPhone acting weird, just put it into recovery mode (press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button for a full 25 seconds), then launch iTunes and allow it to restore the iPhone.