How to Use an Apple Music Song as Your iPhone Alarm

Khamosh Pathak

Bored of the regular old Radar alarm tone on your iPhone? Why don’t you try using a pop song that will get you motivated right at the start of the day? You can do this using any song on Apple Music. Here’s how.

How to Add a Song to Your Apple Music Library

The Alarm app on your iPhone lets you change the alarm tone to any song that you’ve downloaded or synced to your iPhone (using iTunes or the iTunes Store). If you have an Apple Music subscription, you can choose any song from the company catalog (of more than 60 million songs) as an alarm tone.
RELATED: How to Change the Alarm Sound on Your iPhone
If you don’t already use Apple Music, you can sign up for a one-month trial for free. After that, Apple Music will cost you $9.99/month ($4.99/month for university students, and $14.99/month for family accounts).
To get started, open the “Music” app and go to the “For You” tab. Here, if you aren’t already using the service, you’ll see a trial offer. Tap on it to start your subscription. Once you’re signed up for Apple Music, you’ll have to add a song to your Library so that it shows up as an option in the Alarm app.
To do this, go to the “Search” tab, tap on the “Search” bar, and search for your desired song. Here, make sure that the “Apple Music” tab is selected.

You can expand the “Songs” section, or you can select the album. Once you find the song that you want to use, tap on the “+” button next to it.

If you want, you can also save the song for offline playback by tapping on the Download button.

How to Use an Apple Music Song as Your iPhone Alarm

Now that you have added the song to your Apple Music Library, it’s time to set it as your alarm tone.
We can do this from the “Clock” app. Here, select the “Alarm” tab.

Tap on the “Edit” button found in the top-left corner.

Then, tap on the alarm that you want to customize.

From the details screen, choose the “Sound” option.

Here, in the “Songs” section, tap on the “Pick A Song” option.

You’ll see a screen similar to the Library tab in Apple Music. You can use the “Albums” or “Playlists” tab to navigate and explore all the songs from your Library.
Instead of manually trying to locate the song (especially if you have a large music library), it’s much faster to search for the song instead. Tap on the “Search” bar, then search for the song.

Once you find the song, tap on the “+” button next to it.

The song is now selected as the alarm tone. Tap on the “Back” button in the top-left corner of the screen.

From the details screen, tap on the “Save” button.

Your alarm tone has been saved. Enable the alarm, and the next time it goes off, you’ll hear your song instead of the usual alarm tone.

How to Use a Local Song as Your iPhone Alarm

If you prefer to buy songs from the iTunes Store, or if you have a personal song collection that you transferred from your Mac to your iPhone, you can still use a local song as your iPhone alarm. The process is actually quite similar.
Follow the steps that we’ve outlined above to get to the song picker (open the Alarm app > Alarm tab > Edit > select an alarm > Sound > Pick A Song). On this screen, tap on the “Downloaded Music” option.

Now, you can browse for all of the songs that you’ve downloaded or transferred on to your iPhone. Pick an album and then a song.

Next, tap on the “+” button next to a song to add it as an alarm tone.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to scroll through all of your downloaded music, you can use the “Search” bar to find the local song just like we did in the above section.
From there, tap on the “Back” button, then select the “Save” button from the details screen to save the local song as your alarm tone.

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