Return of the free ringtone hack

Back in the halcyon days of iPhone 1.0.2 and iTunes 7.4, there existed a magical process which could turn any music file on your computer into a ringtone from your iPhone with no additional cost. When iTunes 7.4.2 came around, the loophole was closed, but lo and behold it has mysteriously returned in iTunes 7.5 and iPhone 1.1.2.

And with it, Rogue Amoeba’s simple GUI for managing the custom ringtone rigmarole, MakeiPhoneRingtone, has returned from the dead. Simply drop a music file on the application, and it’ll show up in iTunes under Ringtones and be synced to your iPhone. I gave it a try this morning and it worked swimmingly, putting my new ringtone in the Custom ringtone section right next to the tones I bought from iTunes and the ones I’ve transfered with iToner.

A couple of caveats do exist: for some reason, ringtones created through this loophole are inexplicably limited to no more than 40.04 seconds (perhaps Apple is a fan of palindromes). For another thing, since this loophole is unsupported by Apple, it may vanish at any point in the future. And, er, come back.

Category: Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Nov 13 2007, 11:05 AM ET

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