OS X Yosemite: Changing Your Mac's Ringtone

I’ve found myself making and answering more phone calls on my Mac than I imagined I would when Yosemite came out. Hey, I’m all for anything that lets me pretend I’m some high-tech businessperson who’s just TOO important and busy to bother picking up a phone. The fantasy world I live in is a fun place.

In any case, since our computers are now ringing when we’re getting calls, we should be able to change what ringtone we hear, right? It’s easy to do, but the place where the setting lives isn’t obvious. To get to it, first open the FaceTime program from your Applications folder.

From the menus at the top of your screen, you’ll then choose FaceTime> Preferences.

In the Preferences window, the “Ringtone” drop-down is near the bottom of the “Settings” tab. Switch that to whatever blows your skirt up!

Of course, if you’ve set specific ringtones for any of your contacts, those’ll override this default preference. For everyone else, though, you’ll hear the sound you picked. I admit that I hate the ringtone Apple chose to be the default, so this is a surprisingly important setting for me. Us big, important businesspeople are very picky, don’t you know.