Toad’s Stool

Custom SMS and Mail tones on the iPhone

Posted on 16. Dec, 2009 by Toad in Apple, Cell Phones, Things to try

So tonight I was looking into a way to customize the SMS and New Mail tones on my iPhone.  For whatever reason Apple didn’t think this was a setting you should be allowed to change.  After all, Steve knows what you want.  After a few minutes I found a forum post that gave some generalities on how you could do it on a Jailbroken iPhone.  After spending a few minutes tinkering with it I managed to come up with a working process.  I have outlined that below if your interested.

Step 1 – Creating Your Audio Files

You will need to use an .aif file or you will need to use a program to convert your files to .aif.  I downloaded Switch Audio Converter and it seemed to do the job just fine.  Once you have an .aif version of your file,  you need to rename the new file to a file name that corresponds with an existing iPhone system file.  The problem is that you can’t add new sounds  but you can replace the factory sounds.  For example, if you don’t like the “Horn” SMS alert then you can replace it with your own file by using the file name sms-received4.caf. Your phone will indicate that your using the “Horn” SMS notification but it will actually be the sound you replaced it with.  I have included a list of some of the files at the end of this post to help out.

Step 2 – Installing SSH on Your iPhone

To copy the files to your phone you will obviously need a Jailbroken iPhone.  You will also need a enable SSH on your phone.  You can do this by going to Cydia and installing OpenSSH.  Open SSH is a huge security risk unless you change the root password on the phone.  You can do that by doing the following.

Open a terminal session on your Mac.  If you dont have a mac you can use PuTTY, a free SSH client, on your PC.  From your terminal type the following.  I am assuming that 192.168.1.3 is the IP address of your phone.  You will need to determine the actual IP for your device by going to the setting in your phone.

ssh root@192.168.1.3

You will be asked if you want to connect to the device, just type yes.

You will be prompted for the password for root.  The default password for root on an iPhone is alpine. Your now logged into the shell of your iPhone from your compter.  To change the password type the following.

passwd

You will be asked to enter a new root password two times.  If no errors appear everything worked as it should.  Your password is now changed.  Type exit to logout.  Leave your terminal session open, we will be using it again.

Step 3 – Copying Your Files to Your iPhone

To make the copying process easier I moved all of my .caf files to my desktop.  Again, you will need to use your terminal to copy the files to your phone.  There are also GUI alternatives if you are extremely uncomfortable with the terminal.  To navigate to your desktop in the terminal, simply type the following.

cd Desktop

Now to actually copy the files we will use a protocol called Secure Copy.  This tool is built into the the OSX shell.  If you are using windows you can use a tool called WinSCP to do the same thing in an explorer like shell. This command is case sensitive so please pay close attention when using it.

To copy all .caf files on your desktop to the phone use the following command

scp *.caf root@192.168.1.3:/System/Library/Audio/UISounds/

To copy a specific file use a command similar to the one below.  This will have to be modified to specify the file you want to copy.

scp sms-received4.caf root@192.168.1.3:/System/Library/Audio/UISounds/

At this point, if everything went as planned, you should have new notification sounds on your iPhone.  It may seem like a lot of work but once you get the process down it’s actually really easy and I think you’ll find the results worth it.  I have also linked to a couple of the .aif files I made if you want a starting point.

Droid.aif – The sound used on the Motorola Droid Phone

gotmail.aif - The classic AOL “You’ve Got Mail”

iPhone System File Names

Voicemail Tone

Voicemail.caf

Mail Tones

mail-sent.caf
new-mail.caf

Voice Recorder

begin_record.caf
end_record.caf

Camera Tones

photoShutter.caf
begin_video_record.caf
end_video_record.caf

Shake Sound

shake.caf

Call Waiting Tone

ct-call-waiting.caf

Phone Key Press

dtmf-0.caf
dtmf-1.caf
dtmf-2.caf
dtmf-3.caf
dtmf-4.caf
dtmf-5.caf
dtmf-6.caf
dtmf-7.caf
dtmf-8.caf
dtmf-9.caf
dtmf-pound.caf
dtmf-star.caf

SMS Tones

SentMessage.caf
sms-received1.caf
sms-received2.caf
sms-received3.caf
sms-received4.caf
sms-received5.caf
sms-received6.caf