Add a tone as an Alert Tone rather than as a Ringtone I have successfully added a tone to my iPhone 7, as explained in this Apple Communities discussion.

However it is getting added as a “ringtone” rather than as an “alert tone.”

How can I change it to an Alert Tone? It’s barely 1-second long. When syncing or creating the .m4r file, there is no option to select the type as either Ringtone or Alert Tone.

The reason I need this is to add a custom notification for a WhatsApp contact. WhatsApp only allows me to choose from Alert Tones.

So the way I see it there are two options:


Ask WhatsApp to allow to choose from Ringtones.
Add my own Alert Tone. 


I am exploring option 2 here, because WhatsApp support isn’t being very helpful.
As of iOS 11 it is not possible to create custom Alert Tones, only custom Ringtones.  iTunes itself only makes one Media Kind available for them: Ringtone. That cannot be changed.

You can assign both Ringtones and Alert Tones to any event under Settings → Sounds &amp; Haptics on your iOS device.

As far as app-specific limitations are concerned, you’ll have to take it up to the developers of such apps, in this case WhatsApp. I doubt Apple will add that functionality, since it makes no difference to iOS itself.