Best Ringtone App for Android: Make and Set Your Own
Android can use an audio file on your phone as a ringtone with no app. To trim one first, Ringtone Maker and InShot's MP3 Cutter are both free with ads.
You do not need an app to change a ringtone, or even to use your own audio file as one. Android and Samsung both have that built in. An app earns its place for two jobs: cutting a long track down to the part you want to hear, and giving each app or person a sound you can tell apart.
We read Google’s and Samsung’s help pages for the built-in steps, then went through the Google Play listings of the ringtone apps. This article keeps to tools that work on audio you already have, and to sound libraries that state where their sounds come from.
Set a ringtone from a file on your phone
On most Android phones
Open Settings, tap Sound & vibration, then Ringtone, pick one and tap Save. For notifications, the same screen has Default notification sound.
To add your own, Google’s help page says to connect the phone to a computer by USB and copy the music file, an MP3 in its example, into the phone’s Ringtones folder. After that it can be chosen like any other ringtone. Google adds that alarms use a different folder. For those, the Clock app has its own route: tap the alarm’s sound, then Add new, and choose your file.
On a Samsung Galaxy
Samsung makes it shorter. Go to Settings, Sounds and vibration, Ringtone, tap the plus sign and choose a song stored on the phone. A switch called Play selected highlights only decides whether the song plays from the beginning or only certain parts of it play. Notification sound is a separate entry on the same Sounds and vibration screen.
Samsung’s support page is firm on one point: the song has to be an actual file on the device. Tracks inside Spotify or another streaming service cannot be set as ringtones.
One person, one app
For a contact, open Contacts, tap the person, then More and Set ringtone. On a Galaxy the menu item is Change ringtone/vibration. For apps, Google’s advice is to look in each app’s own settings menu, where some let you choose the sound their notifications make.
On what is fair to use: a song you bought or made yourself is fine to turn into a ringtone, and a downloaded copy of someone else’s track is not.
Ringtone apps compared
| App | What it is for | Maker | On Google Play | What its listing offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ringtone Maker | Cutting your own audio, plus free tones | Big Bang Inc. | Free with ads | Trims MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV and M4A files, records your voice, fades in and out, assigns to a contact |
| MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker | Cutting your own audio | InShot Inc. | Free with ads, in-app purchases | Trimming to the millisecond, merging and mixing tracks, format and bitrate choices |
| MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker | Cutting your own audio | Atomic Infoapps | Free with ads | Three steps: choose a file, mark the part, save it. Can also record |
| AudioLab | Full audio editing | HitroLab | Free with ads, in-app purchases | Cut, merge, convert and record, pull the sound out of a video, save as ringtone |
| Pi Music Player | Music player with a cutter | App Holdings | Free with ads, in-app purchases | Plays the music files on your phone and trims any of them into a ringtone |
| Notification Sounds | Ready-made short tones | Ringtones and Wallpapers Apps by Trela | Free with ads, in-app purchases | More than 140 sounds in six categories, stated to be Creative Commons or public domain |
| NotifyTone | A different sound for each app | Sodonika | Free, in-app purchases | Your own audio files or built-in tones per app. Three rules free, a one-time purchase for more |
| Tine | A different sound for each app | Polyhistor | Free, in-app purchases | Keeps your usual chime and shifts its pitch and speed for the apps you choose |
How to make a ringtone from your own audio
The cutters all work the same way. These steps follow the InShot and Big Bang listings.
- Get the audio onto the phone as a file: a song you bought as a download, a recording, a voice memo.
- Open the cutter and choose the file. InShot’s listing says the app finds the audio files on your phone and SD card by itself.
- Mark where the clip starts and ends. Ringtone Maker lets you slide two arrows along the waveform or type in the times. InShot’s app zooms the waveform for finer cuts. Both can fade the clip in and out so it does not start with a jolt.
- Save it as a Ringtone, Alarm or Notification. Ringtone Maker’s listing says it writes to the phone’s ringtones, alarms and notifications folders by default. The first is the folder Google’s own instructions use.
- Set it. Both apps can give the clip to a single contact, and InShot’s can make it your ringtone, alarm or notification sound directly. Or pick it later in Settings.
Both listings declare permissions to change system settings and to read your contacts, and say these are only used to set the tone and to assign it to a person. If you would sooner not share contacts, Big Bang publishes the same cutter without that permission as Ringpod.
The cutters
Ringtone Maker from Big Bang is the one to start with. It does the job described above, records your own voice if you want a spoken ringtone, and Google Play shows only an ads label with nothing to buy inside. It also offers tones to download, and its listing states that these are public domain or Creative Commons and credited in the app. A separate paid version, Ringtone Maker Pro, is $1.99 on the US store, and the free listing describes it as the ad-free edition.
MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker from InShot does more: joining several clips, mixing two tracks, changing the format and bitrate. Take it if you want to build a tone out of pieces.
The app of the same name from Atomic Infoapps is the plain one. Its listing sums the whole process up in three steps, and Google Play shows nothing to buy inside it.
AudioLab is a general audio editor that happens to make ringtones. It converts between formats and extracts the sound from a video. Pi Music Player makes sense if you want one app to play your music files and trim them. For more on editors, see our guide to audio editing apps for Android.
Ready-made notification tones
The sounds that came with your phone are the obvious place to start. Beyond those, look for a library that says where its sounds come from.
Notification Sounds does. Its listing says every sound is under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain, with details inside the app, and that its music clips are cover versions made by musicians contracted to the company. The same maker’s Ringtones for Android carries the same statement for longer tones. Both show ads.
A different sound for each app
Start with the apps’ own settings, as Google suggests. When an app gives you no choice, two tools fill the gap, and both need notification access so they know which app has just alerted you.
NotifyTone assigns a sound to each app from your own files or its built-in tones. The free version covers three apps, a one-time purchase removes the limit, and the listing says it has no ads and does not read the content of your notifications.
Tine needs no sound files. It takes the chime you already use and makes it slightly higher, deeper, quicker or slower for each app you select. Its listing is upfront about one chore: Android will not let it silence the app’s original sound for you, so you confirm that step in system settings.
Which one to pick
- You have the file and only want it as your ringtone: no app. Use the plus sign on a Galaxy, or the Ringtones folder on other phones.
- You want one part of a song you own: Ringtone Maker.
- You want to join or mix clips: MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker from InShot.
- You want a new alert sound without hunting for files: the ones already on the phone, then Notification Sounds.
- You want to tell apps apart by ear: the app’s own settings first, then NotifyTone for your own files or Tine for variations on one chime.
Zedge and the old list
Zedge is the app people ask for by name, and it is still on Google Play, now labelled as containing ads and in-app purchases. Its listing describes millions of wallpapers and ringtones, and a tool that generates a tone from a description you type.
It is not in our table. Zedge’s website has an Upload button on its ringtones page, so part of the catalogue comes from other users, and we could not confirm who holds the rights to any given clip. If you use it, the generated tones and the work that named artists publish there are the parts easiest to be sure of.
For the same reason we left out apps whose listings promise the hits of the day as free downloads. Z Ringtones, from the 2019 list, appears on the store today as Z Ringtones Premium 2026. Its listing offers the year’s top ringtones across pop, hip hop and rock and says nothing about where they come from, so it is out as well.
The 2019 article also named Ringtone Maker, MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker and Pi Music Player. Apps with all three names are on the store and covered above. More than one app now carries the MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker name, and we could not tell which the old article meant, so two of them are in the table.
Tones are one part of making a phone your own. For the rest, see our guide to customisation apps for Android.
Quick answers
How do I make a song my ringtone on Android?
The song has to be a file on the phone. On a Galaxy, go to Settings, Sounds and vibration, Ringtone and tap the plus sign. On other phones, copy the file into the Ringtones folder, or let a cutter such as Ringtone Maker save it there, then pick it under Settings, Sound & vibration, Ringtone.
Can I use a Spotify song as a ringtone?
No. Samsung’s support page says songs from Spotify and other streaming services cannot be set as ringtones, because the phone needs an actual audio file.
How do I set a different notification sound for each app?
Check the app’s own settings first, which is what Google’s help page recommends. If the app has no option, NotifyTone or Tine can add one.
What is a good free ringtone maker?
Ringtone Maker from Big Bang Inc. is free with ads and has no in-app purchases. InShot’s MP3 Cutter and Ringtone Maker is the one to pick if you also want to merge or mix clips.
Is there an app like Zedge?
For ready-made sounds with a stated licence, Notification Sounds and the tones inside Ringtone Maker. Neither has a catalogue the size of Zedge’s, and that is the trade.
