Technology Tales

Finding and Using Better iPhone Ringtones and Alarms

Published on 30^th August 2026 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

This summer has been me spend a lot of my weekends among Yorkshire's moors and dales. Rather than take my usual iPhone with me, I brought a Samsung Galaxy A53 that was my mainstay before I switched to Apple. Naturally, call forwarding was set up to facilitate this. Along the way, I was reminded just how much better ringtones and alarm music was on the older phone. Thus, I decide to see if I could choose something that was more to my liking.

Somewhat ironically, that led me to Pixabay. After all, its mainstay is a healthy collection of royalty-free imagery and video. However, it also has a selection of royalty-free music and sound effect clips which gave me something to explore and download if I so chose. Upbeat yet mellow instrumentals were what I had in mind. To me, using a vocal track is a bit out, and maybe out of keeping with what I often listen to in any event.

As it happens, I found what I needed. The website was browsed on my phone and I downloaded the desired tracks to the device. My next move was to open the Files app and find the audio files. On selecting one of them, a menu appeared. From that, I chose Share and then sought out Use as Ringtone (you may need to tap the More button to see that). After all that, they are available for use when the appropriate setting is made.

For phone ringtones, this may mean going to Settings > Apps > Phone > Notifications > Sounds to use the newly available tune. However, the changing the Ringtone entry under Settings > Sounds & Haptics could allow you to accomplish the same end faster. Doing likewise for an alarm uses a different route: Clock > Alarm and editing the alarm itself to use the new sound via the Sound setting.

Since I did all this, the new alarm tune has woken me up to catch a morning flight, accomplishing what I needed it to do. This is an example of my choices working for me so far. With some more use, the new tunes hopefully will embed themselves into my memory like the ones on the Samsung device. At least, I have an option for changing them if I ever need to do that, an unlikely possibility to my mind.