iPhone SMS Tones SSH

There are a number of ways to move files to and from your iPhone and your Computer. You may wish to do this to send large files across or backup current content. You can also easily create and move iPhone ringtones and SMS Text Message tones to your iPhone via SSH.

SSH is a background system that allows you to connect to your iPhone over wifi and transfer files from your computer to your iPhone. Note: No icon will appear for the SSH system available on your iPhone, at least none are now at the time of writing this. (so we use another 2 programs on the iPhone to turn on and off the SSH feature..... read on!

1. You will need to have a jailbroke iPhone or iPod Touch in order to SSH into your iPhone or iPod Touch. For more information on Jailbreaking please search the net.

2. When you jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch, the Cydia application will be added to your SpringBoard with the rest of your applications. You will want to go open Cydia and search for the application called "OpenSSH". This is found under the "Utilities" Section. If it is not already installed, you will need to install it via Cydia which is a 2 click process.
You will also need to install BossPrefs application, which can be found under Cydia also. This is an excellent app which expands on the iPhone services by adding some more options and focusing on being a complete preferences replacement. Here in BossPrefs you can easily toggle SSH on or off on your iPhone.

3. Then you will need some type of SSH client installed on your computer. WinSCP is great for PCs. Macs come with OPENSSH... but alot of people use Cyberduck, Transmit, or the built in Terminal.

4. To sign into the iPhone, the Host Name is the "iPhone’s IP address" which you can find by going into your Settings application on your iPhone (or iPod Touch) and then into the Wi-fi option, click on the little arrow next to the Wi-Fi you are connected to and find the IP address. The username is root and default password is alpine (no capitals). Don’t worry about the Private key file but will need to accept it so your computers can talk to each other.

5. Back on your Computer, trim your MP3 files using an Audio Editing program (usually SMS notification should be shorter, roughly 3-4 seconds should be good). You can use any audio editing application, we use a great app called Wire Tap Pro which lets us export direct to AIFF format (read on). If you dont have an AIFF export feature or Audio Converter program, dont worry, you can use iTunes to do the conversion. Import the MP3 file to iTunes. Goto iTunes -> Preferences (for Mac) or Edit -> Preferences (for PC). Navigate to Advanced -> Importing tab and set the “Import Using:” to AIFF. Import the file, then go find the AIFF file in itunes and and copy to desktop/ Using Finder (Mac) or whatever windows uses..... Change the extension of your new AIFF file to “.caf”

6. Create the SSH connection to the iPhone using Cyberduck, Transmit, Terminal (Mac) or WinSCP (Windows) or any other SCP software.

7. Navigate to the following directory on your iPhone: “/System/Library/Audio/UISounds”. Change one of the "sms-received1-6.caf" files to "sms-received_*.caf" where "*" is an integer from 1 to 6 that is least preferable


. For example: Rename “sms-received6.caf” to “sms-received_6.caf” . This will backup the original file, so we can replace the Electronic file with our custom sound.

8. Upload the file from your desktop to the directory on your iPhone. This will then replace the original file that you renamed. Now go back to your phone and choose in "Settings/Sounds/ your new tone
, For example: if you replaced sms-received6.caf, then you should choose Electronic, as this is the 6th and last one in the list.

Note: If your phone goes into Lock mode, your SSH connection will be lost, so its important to turn your lock off whilst working in SSH and moving files about between your iPhone and computer.

If you just want easy drag and drop tones to your iphone, check out iToner, a wicked personal tones solution for your iphone.