There are plenty of ways to get custom ringtones for your phone. You can pay to download ringtones, or create them using a desktop audio editor and then copy them to your phone. But if you happen to have an ANdroid phone, you can use Ringdroid, a free app that lets you create a ringtone from any audio file on your mobile device in just a few clicks.

Scan to download

When you first launch Ringdroid, it will scan your phone for audio files. Just click on any file to open it in the editor, and set the start and end points in the wave form. Click the save button, and your new ringtone will be saved to your device. You can set new ringtones as the default for your phone, or assign it to a contact in your contact list.

If you don’t want to use an audio file already on your device, you can also hit the “Record New” button to record a new ringtone.

What’s really cool about Ringdroid is that you can make your ringtones as long or as short as you like, and you can start and end your clip anywhere in the audio file. In other words, it’s not just for making Ringtones. My background is in radio journalism, and I can imagine plenty of instances where it would have been nice to have been able to be able to record a quick interview with my phone, edit a soundbite and email it to my colleagues at the radio station. Ringdroid can do all of that. For free.
It’s not exactly a complex digital audio editing app. You can’t add effects or adjust the volume. But you can clip an excerpt from an audio file easily and quickly.
Ringdroid is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...