hacks

Give Your Work Phone A Custom Ringtone

Jacob Salmela

Dec 11, 2015 • 3 min read

This may work for other devices, but the one I used was a NEC DT700 (original PDF instructions). I have seen these models in several different workplaces. The process can probably be adapted for other phones, too.

Download Or Create/Convert A .wav Ringtone File

Download

You can find some pre-formatted tones here. My personal favorite–and the one I chose for my ringtone–was a female voice saying “we are under virus attack.” 😂

Save the file as /Users/<username>/Public/Melody1.wav (case sensitive)

Do this for a couple of reasons that will make it easier to download the file to your phone:

Melody1.wav it is the default filename, so this way you don’t need to use the key numbers to enter letters, which is laborious
Storing it in your Public folder helps avoid any permission issues when transferring the file over FTP

Convert

Initially, I had a lot of difficulty converting the sounds. I wanted (mostly Star Trek sounds🖖 but I ended up making my ringtone the flute song from A Link To The Past). But then I found a method that seems to work reliably. You need to install sox via Homebrew, then run this command:

sox input.wav -r 8000 -c 1 -e u-law output.wav

There are also other programs to use use like NCH Switch, which seems straightforward but never really worked for me. Or if you want a little more control, Audacity has the ability to export in the proper format, but you will probably need to do some more tinkering.

You can use just about any .wav file for your custom ringtone as long as it meets these requirements:

File size: 256K or less
Bit rate: 64K
Audio sample size: 8bit
Channel: mono
Sample rate: 8kHZ/16
Audio format: CCITT u-law

Once you have it converted, you can check your it the settings are correct using Invisor Lite. But if you used the sox convert command, you can probably just skip over this.

Steps To Download The Custom Ringtone To Your Office Phone

Enable FTP On Your Mac

Run these commands from Terminal:

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist
sudo -s launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Set Up Your Phone To Download The Files

1. Press the Menu button on your phone

2. Choose Setting

3. Choose Download

4. Choose FTP Settings

5. Fill out your computer’s username and password as well as the folder (Public)

6. Set the Download Address to the IP address of your computer

Download The File To Your Phone

Make sure your Melody1.wav is in your Public folder on your Mac
Choose Download Files on your phone
Select Ring Tone
Choose Download 1 (you can save up to three custom ringtones)
Press Exec at the filename since your file is already named Melody1.wav

The file will be saved and then the download is complete.

If your file is formatted incorrectly, you will get an error message.

Set Your Ringtone To Your Custom File

Now, all you need to do is set Download 1 as your ringtone.