How to Customize a Contact's Ringtone on an iPhone

Sep 14, 2021

1 minute

Sometimes, when you are busy or out and about and your iPhone starts ringing, you don't want to pick it up, but you know it might be so-and-so with that important call you've been waiting on. Maybe, you think it might be one of your children calling to ring you about something critical, but you dig through your bag only to find out it was a spammy call and you could've continued what you were doing uninterrupted.

Did you know you can customize your contacts to a ringtone of your choosing? Each contact can have its very own ringtone so that you always know who is calling before you start looking for your iPhone or digging through your bag to pick up. Plus, it's fun. You can buy ringtones so that your best friend's favorite song becomes their ringtone or the song your dad loved when you were a kid becomes his ringtone.

The sky is really the limit when it comes to possibilities. In this guide, I show you how to customize a ringtone for an individual contact. These steps can apply to any contact and any ringtone.

Note: The below steps can also be adapted to change a contact's text tone.

iPhone

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First, go to your home screen. Find the Phone app and give it a click. Alternatively, you can open the Contacts app, if it is readily available to you on your iPhone's home screen.

Click "contacts" at the bottom of the screen.

Select the contact you want to change the ringtone for.

Click "edit" in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Click "ringtone default." It may not say "default" if you have changed the ringtone before. In that case it will say "ringtone" followed by the ringtone name.

This is where you can also choose "text tone default," if you want to change that contact's text tone versus its ringtone. The process is virtually the same.

Select the ringtone you would like to use for that contact.

Of course, if you want to get fancy you can buy a ringtone to use with your contact. Maybe you want it to be that contact's favorite song or favorite TV show theme song. Either way, this process is super simple while adding just a few additional steps.

To learn how to buy a ringtone to use for that specific contact, or many others if you choose, check out my guide on how to buy a ringtone for an iPhone contact.