Best Ringtone App for Android to Cut Your Own Tones
A song has to be a file on the phone to become a ringtone, so Spotify tracks are out. InShot's cutter joins clips, and NotifyTone gives each app a sound.
Cutting a long track down to the part you want to hear is the job a ringtone app is for, and Ringtone Maker from Big Bang does it free with ads and nothing to buy inside. Changing the tone itself takes no app at all, even when it is your own audio file. The other job worth installing something for is giving each app or person a sound you can tell apart.
Cutting a ringtone out of your own audio
The cutters all work the same way.
- 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.
Choosing between the cutters
Install Ringtone Maker from Big Bang Inc. first. It trims MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV and M4A files and records your own voice if you want a spoken ringtone. 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 Inc. does more: trimming to the millisecond, joining several clips, mixing two tracks, changing the format and bitrate. It is free with ads and in-app purchases. Take it if you want to build a tone out of pieces.
More than one app carries that name. The one from Atomic Infoapps is the plain one, free with ads. Its listing sums the whole process up in three steps: choose a file, mark the part, save it. It can also record, and Google Play shows nothing to buy inside it.
AudioLab, from HitroLab, is a general audio editor that happens to make ringtones. It cuts, merges and records, converts between formats and extracts the sound from a video. Pi Music Player, from App Holdings, makes sense if you want one app to play your music files and trim them. Both are free with ads and in-app purchases. For more on editors, read about audio editing apps for Android.
Setting a tone with no app
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.
Samsung makes it shorter. On a Galaxy, 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.
For one person, open Contacts, tap the person, then More and Set ringtone. On a Galaxy the menu item is Change ringtone/vibration.
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.
A different sound for each app
Google’s advice is to look in each app’s own settings menu, where some let you choose the sound their notifications make. 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. Both are free with in-app purchases.
NotifyTone, from Sodonika, 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, from Polyhistor, 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.
Ready-made tones, and the question of Zedge
The sounds that came with your phone are the obvious place to look first. Beyond those, look for a library that says where its sounds come from.
Notification Sounds, from Ringtones and Wallpapers Apps by Trela, does. It has more than 140 sounds in six categories and in-app purchases. 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.
Zedge is the app people ask for by name, and it is on Google Play, 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.
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.
The nearest things with a stated licence are Notification Sounds and the tones inside Ringtone Maker. Neither has a catalogue the size of Zedge’s, and that is the trade.
We would leave alone any app whose listing promises the hits of the day as free downloads. Z Ringtones appears on the store 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.
Tones are one part of making a phone your own. For the rest, go to customisation apps for Android.
