Jan Johannsen
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Choose your own audio files: personal ringtones could make a comeback with iOS 26

Jan Johannsen
16.6.2025
Translation: Elicia Payne

With iOS 26, Apple’s making it much easier to use your own audio files as ringtones. But they can’t be too long.

You rarely hear a phone ring these days and when someone does call, they often just vibrate. There’s no more crazy frog repeatedly trying to sell ear-piercing ringtones. But this may well change soon – for iPhones anyway. With iOS 26, Apple’s making it much easier to select your own sound file as a ringtone.

Ringtone can be 30 seconds max

With iOS 26, you can set an audio file directly as a ringtone – provided you’re willing to turn the sound back on. All you need to do is go into the file and call up the Share menu, then click on «Use as Ringtone». That’s it – so long as the audio file isn’t too long. The system issues an error message for files that are longer than 30 seconds.

Audio files can be selected as a ringtone in iOS 26 using the share function.
Audio files can be selected as a ringtone in iOS 26 using the share function.
Source: Jan Johannsen

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t offer a selection function for the 30-second snippet when loading the ringtone. If your file is longer, you’ll need to use an audio editor from the App Store to shorten your sound file.

If you’ve imported several files, you can select the ringtone as usual in the settings under «Sounds & Haptics».

iOS 26 is coming in Autumn 2025

Currently, the new function can only be tested in the beta version of iOS 26. If it proves successful there, it’s said it’ll be released in autumn – most likely with the announcement of the iPhone 17 in September – with the final version of the operating system that’s available for all iPhones.

In the following article, my colleague Samuel Buchmann has summarised other new features of iOS 26, such as the design called Liquid Glass and the redesigned camera app:

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Header image: Jan Johannsen

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Jan Johannsen
Senior Editor
Jan.Johannsen@galaxus.de

As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus. 

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