YouTube Shorts Ringtone Maker: Cut a Short to M4R or MP3

Ringtones for iPhone (M4R) and Android (MP3)

Phones take ringtones in different shapes, so the ringtone maker offers three:

• M4A for an iPhone with iOS 26 or later — open it in the Files app, tap Share and choose Use as Ringtone. iOS takes up to 30 seconds this way.
• M4R for an iPhone through a computer — the classic iPhone ringtone file, added in Finder on a Mac or in the Apple Devices app on Windows, up to 40 seconds long.
• MP3 for Android — Samsung, Pixel, Xiaomi and every other Android phone list an MP3 as a ringtone, a notification sound or an alarm.

All three are cut from the Short’s original audio and encoded once, at 192 kbps — more than a phone’s speaker can tell apart.

Cut the Best Part: Start, End and Fade

Most songs and sounds take a few seconds to get going, and the part people remember — the drop, the chorus, the punchline — is rarely at 0:00. Drag the sliders to it, or play the Short in the preview and press Start here and End here at the right moments; both move in tenths of a second.

Fade in and out softens up to the first and last second and a half, so the ringtone does not start mid-word at full volume or stop with a click. Turn it off for a sound that should hit at once, such as an alert.

Shorts BGM and Music as a Ringtone

Shorts are where songs and background music go viral before anyone knows their names — a trending sound, a remix, a line from a film. If you can hear it in a Short, you can make it your ringtone: paste the Short’s link here instead of hunting for the full track. A Shorts BGM ringtone works the same way whatever the language of the song, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu hits included.

For the whole sound rather than a clip, the Shorts to MP3 page saves it at up to 320 kbps.

How to Set Your New Ringtone

On an iPhone with iOS 26 or later, open the M4A in the Files app, tap Share and choose Use as Ringtone; it then shows up under Settings → Sounds & Haptics → Ringtone. With an older iOS, import the file into GarageBand and share it from there as a ringtone, or add the M4R through a computer.

On Android, open Settings → Sound → Ringtone — Sounds and vibration on a Samsung — and tap the + or “My sounds” to pick the MP3 from your phone.

Step by step, with where each setting hides on each phone: ringtone on iPhone, ringtone on Android and a YouTube song as your alarm.

Is It Okay to Use Music from Shorts as a Ringtone?

A ringtone made for your own phone is personal use, and that is how most people treat it. Sharing or selling ringtones made from someone else’s song is a different matter and needs the rights holder’s permission. Sounds from your own Shorts and royalty-free music are always yours to use.