How to get back the Duck sound as an alert tone.

It irritates me that the official responses to this help request is a variation of the theme: ‘Suggest it as a change to future iOS updates via feedback.’

The classic duck quacking sound is not available as an “Alert Tone” like so many posts explained. In iOS 18 (and some older) a Duck “Ringtone” is available under the “Classic” subsection listed at the bottom of the list for only “Ringtones”. It is not available as an “Alert Tone”. The confusing part of this is if you want to use a custom sound for an “Alert Tone” you have to get it on your iPhone as a custom “Ringtone”. Then it will show up in the list of alert sounds at the bottom of the list in a “Ringtones” section. If your phone doesn’t have a “Ringtones” section in the list of “Alert Tones”, it may be because you have not added any additional "Ringtones” yet. Thank Apple for making this confusing.

You can change this using a Windows PC at no cost. It isn’t a simple download one-and-done. It isn’t complicated. An Internet search engine is your friend. I do not want to write a detailed step-by-step how-to. There are many ways to get these results. This is probably not the “easiest” nor “quickest”. This is how I did it. Use this as a starting point to find a way that works for you.

Search for the duck sound. I only found websites that would play it for free. It was behind a paywall to download.

Search for an application that allows recording of sounds played by your PC. The Windows Store has “Sound Recorder” as a free download. Set it to record “What U Hear” then paly the sound in your web browser. I didn’t want to hassle with perfecting the timing for starting/stopping the recording with starting/stopping the playing of the sound. I needed to edit what I recorded to remove the blank spaces. I use “Audacity” with the additional “FFmpeg” library because of the sound file format required. Apple requires alert tones and ringtones to be in the .aac or .m4a or .m4r sound file format. Internet Search on “Advanced Audio Coding” to understand that better if you want. Get the duck sound file you recorded onto your iPhone. I sent it as an email attachment. iCloud also works. Internet search engine for getting files from PC to iPhone.

The last hoop to jump through is getting that sound file to be stored on your iPhone in its internal file structure so that it will show up as a ringtone. It would be helpful if one could open an internal file folder on the iPhone and just move it there, but nope. Internet search again. I used the following YouTube: “How to Set ANY Audio as iPhone Ringtone in 2024”. An additional bonus is the free GarageBand application that YouTube video shows you how to get and use can get the sound file from iCloud.

TO APPLE:

Put the Duck sound back in the available Alert Tones list in addition to the Ringtones. The sound file is already on the phone by default. You just need to put back the pointer to make it also an Alert Tone. That duck sound is unlike anything else. The sound doesn’t get masked by other ambient sounds.