[masterful]

Personalising the smartphone experience is one of the first things we all do on getting a new handset. You don’t want that same message tone as everyone else, because amongst other things, you want to know if it’s actually you receiving a message.

But sometimes it’s more than just selecting a noise from a list. You want to have something you recognise and enjoy as a ringtone – something that’s actually personal to you. If only there was guide on how to effectively personalise your phone…

For IOS

Ringtones

There are a bunch of applications out there that allow you to use your carefully-crafted music library to find and set a ringtone, but they’re all third party apps. This means you’ll have to do an awful lot of exporting and importing with iTunes, when really all you want to do is have your favourite tune play when you’re getting a call.

You may have heard that you can tackle this problem using Apple’s GarageBand app, but to our knowledge there isn’t a straightforward guide out there explaining how to accomplish this. Well, fear not as it is doable, and we can show you how in ten easy steps:

• Download the app from the App Store – it’s free.

• Make sure you’ve got some music saved in your phone’s library and not in any cloud storage systems. Streaming services like Deezer and Spotify won’t work for this, you must own the music.

• Launch the GarageBand app and choose the Audio Recorder option.

• Tap the small addition button on the far right (see below), and change the amount of bars in ‘Section A’ to Automatic. This will allow you to play your track for as long as you like, and not be restricted to x-amount of musical bars.

• Go back to the song, and select the symbol at the top left that looks a bit like Tetris blocks.

• Tap the loop icon at the top and this will take you through to your Apple Loops, and Your Music.

• Find the song you want in the Your Music section. Tap and hold it until a dog-eared page icon appears, and then drag it onto your project board and move to the far left.

• Tap the down-facing arrow in the top left. This will save your file and then place it on a new page on its own.

• Click and hold the project entitled ‘My Song’ and it will start wiggling like your apps do on the homescreen before you move them around.

• Tap the export button in the top left and save it to your Ringtones section. You should then be able to access it via Sounds, in Settings.

Wallpapers

Search ‘wallpapers’ in the App Store and you’ll be faced with loads of high ranking, free apps, stuffed full of choices to decorate your handset with – we recommend you try out Wallpapers HD and iWallpapers.

Failing that, you can go online and search your favourite images, and just screen grab them by pressing the power button and the home button at the same time. Images will save to your usual photo album and from there you can set it as your home screen or lock screen.

For Android

Ringtones

Personalising your sound is a bit easier with Android and you don’t have to faff with any unfamiliar apps to get there. When plugging your handset into a computer using a USB cable, you can open its internal memory like you would any normal external drive. The folders are already named and relate to what they contain, i.e. Alarms, Notifications and Ringtones etc.

This will generally work best if your files are in an .mp3 format. Your device should already have the folders you’re looking for, so just drag and drop the audio files into their respective places. Once you’re finished, disconnect your smartphone and restart it.

To find your new sounds on the phone, go to Settings and find the Phone Ringtone menu. You should (providing everything’s gone to plan), find your audio files within the existing ringtone list.

Wallpapers

As with the iOS range, there are a plethora of apps dedicated to jazzing up your handset. Head to the Google Play Store and check out what they’ve got on offer. We were impressed with Backgrounds HD Wallpapers ‘ range of options – but rest assured, there’s loads of apps to choose from.

As with iOS, you can screen grab stuff whilst you’re online – however as you may have noticed there is no physical home button on Android devices. Hold the power button and ‘volume down’ button on the rocker simultaneously to snap the screen. It will flash to let you know it’s been successful and then save to your photo album.

---

› See More: How to personalise your smartphone

[bounceback]

Hi! The Spotify app is a great way to listen to music for free. You can register a free account and listen to ad-supported music. You can also upgrade to a premium account for even more features such as offline listening and high-quality audio. On this site, you will find absolutely any music from the latest album of many artists. If you are interested in this application, then I recommend reading spotify reviews and understand if you want to use this application.