Create custom talking iPhone ringtones with AutoRingtone

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 12:27

Opinion and Analysis

Ever wished your iPhone could actually tell you who is calling? With AutoRingtone, it can.

OK, I admit I don't get the whole ringtone thing. When my phone rings, I just want it to ring as discreetly as possible.

And I don't like having calls automatically diverted to voicemail, as that makes an incoming call too intrusive: I'd have to rush to answer before the call's diverted, and that's not very respectful of those I'm with. Since I need to get the phone out to reject the call, I might just as well look at the screen to see who is calling.

But clearly there is demand from people that want to be able to tell who is calling from the ringtone that plays. I can just about see having one ringtone for important callers (significant other, parents/children, boss and maybe the kids' schools) and another for everyone else, but that's as far as it goes.

If you do want to know exactly who is calling without looking at the phone, why not have the ringtone announce the caller?

That's where No Tie Software's AutoRingtone app for the iPhone comes in. The $A1.19/$US0.99 application can create custom ringtones using good quality speech synthesis and a bunch of sound effects.

You can either type in a contact's name to automatically generate a ringtone ("YOURNAME, your phone is ringing. CALLER is calling. YOURNAME, please answer the phone"), or use the app in manual mode to choose exactly what the ringtone says.

The app doesn't actually generate the ringtone - it sends the data to No Tie Software's server where the ringtone is produced in .m4r and .AIFF formats (in case you want to use the ringtone with something other than an iPhone). You'll need to download the ringtone to a computer, then transfer it to the iPhone via iTunes.

If you're not prepared to risk about a buck, there's also a free, 'light' version of AutoRingtone that will give you a feel for what's possible.