Adding Alarm Tones - Solved!

geebee1932

Active member
Dec 21, 2010
25
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I was having trouble adding additional alarm tones but finally stumbled on a solution. Adding ringtones and notification tones was no problem, I just added the files to the Ringtones and Notification folders on the virtual SD card. These added tones them simply turned up and were selectable. Not the case with the alarm tones however. Here is how I solved the problem.

  1. Use a file explorer, I use ES Explorer
  2. Add the tones that you want to the Alarms folder
  3. Long press on an alarm and play it (I used the player in ES Explorer)
  4. While it's playing select the menu (3 dots in the upper right corner) and select "set as ringtone"
  5. After "set as ringtone" is selected a second menu will ask you were to set it as (Alarm, Notification, or Ringtone)
  6. Select "set as Alarm"
  7. It will no both be set as the alarm tone and it will be in the select list.


Hope this helps. :)
 
Thanks! So if you just added the custom tone to the Alarms directory, it doesn't show up automatically? Does it matter if you do a reboot after moving the tone to the Alarms directory?
 
Thanks! So if you just added the custom tone to the Alarms directory, it doesn't show up automatically? Does it matter if you do a reboot after moving the tone to the Alarms directory?
You need to reboot once you put them into the Alarms directory. No need to do extra steps. Just push them to /sdcard/Alarms folder and reboot.
 
I just leave my custom tones in a directory under downloads. To select them, if you have ES file Explorer installed simply chose ES File Explorer when you are selecting a tone and are prompted for what method to search for files.

If you are in any app and selecting a ring tone, alarm noise or any other notification sound and you don't see a choice of what file browser to use you must have chosen something else as the default app. Try clearing defaults on ES File Explorer?
 
None of these things mentioned work. To be honest, the default sounds that you can choose for Ringtone, Alarms, and Notifications are not in these folders. They are all blank until I add the one I am trying to change. So Android or Huawei has hidden the folder where these are all stored. I can search for oxygen and it is nowhere on the SD Card. I am sure all of these sounds in the root folder which cant be seen unless you root the phone.
 
They are all blank until I add the one I am trying to change.
I'm not sure what you're getting at - once you add a tone to the Alarms/Notifications/Ringtones directory (and reboot as necessary) is your tone shown in the list?

Edit: I just copied an mp3 to each of those three directories (using the built-in Explore feature in Settings -> Storage) and then verified that it was shown in the appropriate list (no reboot required). Then I deleted the file from each of those directories and verified that it was no longer shown in each list. Not sure what the complaints are about.
 
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correct, you cant see the files, because they are system files, which a normal user does not have access to.
however, the folders on the devices that you can see are also sym links to the system folders.
if you are putting files there, and the system is not seeing them, then there is something amiss.
as others have noted it works fine. your case seems to be somewhat isolated.
 
I was having trouble adding additional alarm tones but finally stumbled on a solution. Adding ringtones and notification tones was no problem, I just added the files to the Ringtones and Notification folders on the virtual SD card. These added tones them simply turned up and were selectable. Not the case with the alarm tones however. Here is how I solved the problem.

  1. Use a file explorer, I use ES Explorer
  2. Add the tones that you want to the Alarms folder
  3. Long press on an alarm and play it (I used the player in ES Explorer)
  4. While it's playing select the menu (3 dots in the upper right corner) and select "set as ringtone"
  5. After "set as ringtone" is selected a second menu will ask you were to set it as (Alarm, Notification, or Ringtone)
  6. Select "set as Alarm"
  7. It will no both be set as the alarm tone and it will be in the select list.


Hope this helps. :)
I know this is an old post, but it just helped me out, Thanks!!
 
Good solution for changing default alarm sound too! But hard to find BC you were solving a different problem lol. If you're a good Samaritan you should tweak your post or title a little bit to mention that BC there are no good solutions in Google's top results and I was just looking at everything in desperation. I wish I could have started with this.