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How to Create Custom Droid Ringtones

Nearly A Nerd welcomes web programmer and enthusiastic new Droid owner Joel Doetsch who’s also blogged his favorite Android apps.

So, sick and tired of all the iPhone hype, you took it upon yourself to go out and buy a Droid today. Maybe you were ready to break into the ever expanding smart-phone market, maybe your friends were all laughing at your LG8300. Whatever the case may be, you now have a Droid. It’s sleek, it’s powerful, and…the ringtones are godawful.

In the old days, one would either pay the exorbitant amount of $1.99 for a new ringtone from an app store, or go the more tech-savvy route and install bitpim and illegally force your own ringtones onto it. Either way, the issue was solved. You can’t do that with the Droid. I know, you’re probably questioning that $200 purchase now. I mean sure it has a free GPS with turn by turn directions, but what’s that worth if I can’t even listen to my favorite Miley Cyrus song every time someone calls me?

Well fret no more. Here are the simple instructions for getting all your crazy ringtones onto your phone.

First, we prepare the phone.

The Droid comes with a 16GB SD card already installed. It should also come with a USB cable. You’ll want to attach it to your computer and to the Droid. If you can’t figure out which end goes where, please contact your nearest tech savvy friend.

From the Droid, at the top of the screen you’ll see the USB connector icon. If you pull that down on the touch-screen you’ll get a box called “USB Connected”. If you then click that box, you’ll get the option to “Mount” (you’re a dirty person by the way). Hit that, and now you’re connected to your PC.

In your PC, go to “My Computer” and you’ll see a Removable Disk. If you click on that, there will be a number of files and folders already on the SD Card. Create these folders if they aren’t already there

Create a folder called media inside that folder create another folder called audio

Finally, inside that folder create 3 more folders:
ringtones
notifications
alarms

Those 3 folders will take care of all the different types of ringtones you’ll need on your fancy phone.

So now your phone is prepared to take in music, now how do you get it there?

Go to the marketplace and download an app called Ringdroid. This is an application that allows you to cut pieces of an mp3 out for use as a ringtone. It’s also free as of this writing. Also useful would be to download an application called Astro, which is a file manager. But it’s not completely necessary

Once you’ve done that, take your Miley mp3 and copy it into the main SD Card directory (what you saw when you first opened the removable disk). Use windows “safely remove hardware” button to unhook your USB and then turn off the USB on your phone the same way you turned it on.

Open the Ringdroid app, and select your song. From there it’s basically straightforward. Pick the start and stop points, and hit save. You can also delete the original mp3 from the top directory to save space. Rinse and repeat for any other In my experiences, it’s automatically saved it in my ringtones directory. If that’s what you were going for, then stop. You’re done. Congratulations!

If you want it in a different directory you can either

A) Reconnect your USB, go to the ringtones directory you created earlier, cut and paste the file into the directory you want it to go into (notifications or alarms)

or

B) Use the Astro file manager to do the same thing. It’s a fairly intuitive program, so I won’t get into the details of that. If you can’t get it to work, you’d best go with option A.

I hope I have enlightened, entertained, and otherwise enamored you with my instructions. Have fun, but don’t hold me responsible when your co-workers beat you within an inch of your life for having “The Safety Dance” constantly play when you’re called.

-Joel Doetsch