How-To

How To Get Free Ring Tones And Notification Sounds On Your Android Phone

By Austin Krause

Updated March 25, 2024

If you’ve been using regular cell phones and iPhones for a while, we covered how you can make your own ring tones for free.  But, if you have an Android phone you can take the lazy path and just download pre-made ones for free.  Why go through the trouble of making them yourself?  Let’s get ringing!

Note the screenshots in this article were taken using a Samsung Galaxy S (Sprint Epic 4G) so the location of some menu options may vary depending on your Android device.

Step 1

On your phone, Open the Android Marketplace.  In your App Drawer it is known as just Market.

Step 2

Tap the Search icon and Type Zedge into the search and then Tap the Search icon again.

Step 3

The first result should be the one we are looking for.  It is called Zedge Ringtones & Wallpapers, and it is made by Zedge.  Tap this search result, then download and install it.

Step 4

Once the download finishes, Tap you application drawer.  Inside you should now find the Zedge app, Tap it to open it.

Step 5

Once the Zedge app opens, Tap the Search button and Type in the name of a song or sound you’d like to have as your ring tone.*

*Alternatively you can just Tap the Ringtones button right now and it will show you the current most popular tones.

Step 6

After the search is done your results will display under Wallpapers or Ringtones.  In wallpapers you can download backgrounds for your phone, but that isn’t really anything too special.  Tap Ringtones to see what is available.

Step 7

All available ringtones that match your search terms will be listed on the Ringtones page.  By default they are sorted by popularity over the last 30 days.  Here you can preview each sound by Tapping the Play button. Tap the name of the sound to go in a screen where you can Download or Preview it.

Step 8

After you have tapped the name of the sound, you’ll be on the screen where you have the option to play it, download it, favorite it, or send it to someone.  Since we want to use it as a ringtone or notification tone, we are going to go ahead and Tap Download.

Step 9

The download should go quick, even if you are on 3G.  Once it finishes a new button will appear called Set.  Tap Set to assign the sound.

Step 10

Select what you would like the tone to do.  You can set it as your phone’s Default ringtone, an individual contact’s ringtone, the default notification sound, or as an alarm sound.

Done!

As you’ve seen, on Android it is incredibly easy to download ring tones and set them up on your phone absolutely free.  Zedge is powered by in-app advertisements so the app itself is entirely free as well.  The ringtones are really groovy and you can find nearly any song or sound that you want.

Note that you can also assign contacts using the Zedge sounds just like normal from other parts of your phone.  When you go to set up a sound in your contacts list or System settings, you’ll see a prompt appear giving you the option to use Zedge.