Converting mp3 files to iPhone ringtones in Linux

Posted on Sat 28 February 2009 in Technology

It should go without saying that with “iPhone” and “Linux” in the same sentence you’ll need a jailbroken phone for this. Use the following commands to dump your mp3 file to WAV then convert it to m4a:

  1. mplayer -vo null -vc null -ao pcm:fast:file=file.wav file.mp3
  2. faac -b 128 -c 44100 -w file.wav

You’ll end up with a file.m4a file. Once you have the OpenSSH package installed and running on your iPhone you can use the scp command to copy the ringtone to the correct location:

scp file.m4a root@iphone:/Library/Ringtones/file.m4r

The root password by default is “alpine”. As you can see the file will need to be renamed to end in “.m4r” instead of “.m4a” to be used as a ringtone. You’ll now be able to see it listed with the other ringtones under Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone.

linux iphone