How to Set Ringtones for Specific Contacts on iPhone

Do you want to know who exactly is calling you without having to check your iPhone? By setting personalized ringtones to individual contacts, you can do just that. This is fairly easy to set up on iOS and iPadOS devices, though it’s almost certainly most useful for iPhone users.

By default, you have one ringtone for all of your contacts, and yes the default ringtone can be changed too. But for most of us, we’ll have a few people who we contact on a regular basis, and who reaches out to us regularly too. By assigning a unique ringtone to these specific contacts, you’ll immediately figure out who’s calling you even when your iPhone is being charged on the desk, sitting in your pocket, or tucked away, because you’ll quickly learn to associate the unique ringtone with that contact. You can set as many unique ringtones to individual contacts as you wish on iOS devices, and if you’re worried about running out of ringtones you can always make more with Garageband, out of Voice Memos, or from songs too.

If this sounds good to you, then read on and you’ll quickly learn how you can assign and set unique ringtones for specific contacts on your iPhone (or iPad).

How to Set Custom Ringtones to Individual Contacts on iPhone & iPad

Setting up unique ringtones for individual contacts is a pretty simple and straightforward procedure on both the iPhone and iPad:

1. Open the “Phone” app from the home screen of your iPhone or iPad.
   
   
2. Head over to the “Contacts” section and tap on the contact you want to set a personalized ringtone for.
   
   
3. Once you’re in the contact details menu, tap on “Edit” located at the top-right corner of the screen.
   
   
4. Now, scroll down and tap on the “Ringtone” field, as shown in the screenshot below.
   
   
5. Here, you’ll be able to choose any of the available ringtones as the custom ringtone. You can even purchase new ringtones from the Tone Store, if preferred. Once you’re done with the selection, tap on “Done” to confirm the changes.
   
   

That’s all, now you know how easy it is to set up custom ringtones for your contacts on iPhone and iPad, and you can repeat these steps to set unique ringtones for other individual contacts too. Customize away!

Although we used the stock Phone app for assigning a custom ringtone in this instance, you can do the same thing by going through the Contacts app too. The steps are pretty much identical regardless of what app you go with to start the process.

From now on, whether it’s a friend, colleague, or anyone special, you’ll be able to quickly identify the caller from the personalized ringtone you’ve set for them. This is a great way to get the most out of your iPhone, especially if you receive a lot of phone calls on a daily basis.

By the way, if you want to ignore someone or a particular contact, but don’t want to outright completely block the contact, you can use a silent ringtone assigned to them to make their inbound calls quiet, which won’t impact other calls on your device.

Likewise, you can also assign custom text tones for individual contacts on your iPhone or iPad. You can set a unique text tone for someone in your favorites list and immediately know when someone important texts you.

For what it’s worth, the ability to assign a unique ringtone has been long available for years now, so even if you own an outdated iPhone running an older version of iOS, you should have no trouble setting this up, though the screens may look quite a bit different in modern versus older iOS releases.

We hope you were able to set custom ringtones for the contacts you stay in touch with on a daily basis, to help quickly identify their phone calls. What are your overall thoughts on this handy feature? Do you set unique ringtones to specific contacts? Share your opinions, tips, and experiences in the comments!