Customizing Caller ID for your iPhones

If you always use your iPhone as a music player and then just press the microphone when someone calls, isn’t it nice if there is an audible caller ID to announce whoever is calling? you don’t even have to take your phone out to look at who’s calling, this can also be very helpful when you’re driving.

This process could be scripted somehow, You can just create them one by one. The described process is, however, optimized, taking only about 20 seconds per person.

First, open GarageBand and create a loop of desired length. six bars should be enough. Then place your favorite ringtone sound (you can use one from GarageBand’s Library, found in Sound Effects » Work/Home » Cell Phone Ringing, and boosted its volume a bit) and place it at the second bar.

  1. Copy the person’s name in Address Book.
  2. Paste it to Terminal as part of this command: say -o ~/Desktop/Output.aiff [paste person's name here]. Note that the Up Arrow key reveals the last command used, so later you can backspace the previous name and paste a new one.
  3. Drag the Output file on your desktop to GarageBand on the first bar of your composition.
  4. In GarageBand, choose File » Save As…, and again paste person’s name as the filename (it’s not important where it’s saved).
  5. Then select Share » Send Ringtone To iTunes.

The ringtone will play in iTunes so you can move on to another person. Finally, synchronize your iPhone with your iTunes, and assign the ringtones to your favorite people.

You can also record the part of a voice mail where the caller says his/her name. So when Joe calls the ring tone is “Hi Mark this is John.”

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