How to Set Custom Ringtone for a Contact on iPhone

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 21 Jul 2018

How to Set Custom Ringtone for Individual Contacts on iPhone

Over the years, Apple has only made the iPhone smarter. However, in the process of making the phone smart, the company has ended up making a lot of basic feature phone-level tasks increasingly complex. For example, something as simple as creating a free iPhone ringtone is a tedious task.

Then, there’s the ability to set custom notification tones. This feature was increasingly popular back in the feature phone days but in the iPhone and Android era, it has ended up being buried so deep inside the OS that people hardly tend to use it. This is despite this feature being incredibly handy especially on an iPhone since it lacks a notification LED.

So, if you are wondering how to set up custom ringtones and SMS tones for individual contacts on your iPhone, read below.

How to Set Custom Ringtone and Text Tones for Contacts on iPhone

Step 1: Open the Contacts app on your iPhone and proceed to contact for which you’d like to set a custom ringtone and/or SMS tone. Proceed to edit their contact details by tapping the Edit button located on the top-right corner.

iPhone Edit contact

Alternatively, you can also find the contact from your call log and then proceed to edit their contact details.

Step 2: Once you enter the Edit mode, you will find the Ringtone option which must be set to Default. Tap on it and then select one of the pre-loaded ringtones on your iPhone for that contact.

You can also head over to the Tone Store or download all your purchased tones on the device and set one of those as the ringtone for that contact.

From the same settings page, you can also set enable the Emergency Bypass option which will ensure that calls and texts from that specific contact will bypass the Do Not Disturb rule when it is engaged.

Make sure to tap Done on the top-right corner when you are done.

Step 3: In a similar fashion, you can set a custom ringtone text for individual contacts by using the Text Tone option while editing a contact.


With a custom ringtone for your favorite contacts, you will know when they are calling you or have dropped you a text without having to even glance at your iPhone. It might not seem like a big deal but once you set up custom ringtones for all your favorite contacts, you will end up relying heavily on it.