Close

What are you looking for?

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Go to solution Solved

Using custom sounds for notifications (Samsung Galaxy S9)

(Topic created on: 08-01-2020 05:58 PM)
47371 Views
Niall0
Journeyman
Options

I've been using Samsung Galaxy products for well over a decade now, and recently (ish) upgraded to the Galaxy S9.

In general the experience has been a good one, but there is one aspect of the phone that I used to be able to customise on previous versions, but not on this one for some reason: notification sounds.

 

Now, I don't mean picking the sound I like from their list of pre-loaded sounds, like every help guide Google can find assumes I mean. I mean actually uploading a new sound to the phone and making it available for notifications, just like you can do with ring tones and alarm sounds.

 

It used to be so easy: anything in your Music or Ringtones directory could be specified as a Notification sound (or Alert sound, I think they used to be called).

 

Now I can't even find the directory that the pre-loaded sounds live in!

 

This may seem like a really trivial problem, but it's causing me a lot of issues knowing which incoming texts I need to pay attention to immediately, and which I can ignore until later. So, if anyone knows how to implement properly custom notification sounds (or if it's completely impossible), please let me know!

 

(Oh, and: any news on the "assign specific tones to specific contacts, not specific conversations" debacle?)

19 REPLIES 19
Solution
CLF1
Explorer
Options

Hi, 

It's good to hear that you're enjoying the new ish galaxy s9. I was able to add custom notification tones by opening my files/internal storage and copying media files into the notification folder. As long as the file format is supported it works great.

CLF 

CLF1
Explorer
Options

Hi, 

I should have mentioned that once you copy the media files into the notification folder they will be added to the default list that we use when setting up custom tones per conversation in the messages app. 

CLF 

Niall0
Journeyman
Options
Thanks! That's working now.

To clarify for anyone else who's looking for this answer:

- The folder to put the files into is called "Notifications".

- MP3 format is acceptable (I don't know what others might be) but you'll need to remove all tags and other metadata before it will appear in the Notification Sounds list.
Niall0
Journeyman
Options
Yeah, about that 'per conversation' part... people have been asking for the option to assign notification sounds 'per contact' pretty constantly for over 18 months now; is there any sign of that very useful feature being put back in? (And any explanation as to why it was taken out in the first place?)
CLF1
Explorer
Options

Hi, 

So far I have .wma, .m4a and mp3. I'm using a music player strictly for cutting music files into ring tones and notification tones and I've downloaded a few from an online website.

I see many community members have suggested that feature be brought back. I think the update to Android 9.0 changed so many things that it was almost impossible to get it to work the way we want it to so they created the best solution at the time so that we would at least have some way of setting custom notification tones for our contacts. I think we need someone with better knowledge than I have to help us with this one. 

Thank you for replying and letting us know how everything worked out. 

Have fun, 

CLF 

 

Drokal
First Poster
Options

This was marked as resolved but it is NOT.  I have no way to associate people/events and select notification tones.  Right now 9+ is a step back from my S6.  This was critical to my ~3000 texts a mont .  Keeping my S6 until it's fixed. 

Scarecrowed
First Poster
Options

Here's some useful info if you haven't already figured it out.

Open MyFiles and select internal storage (will not work if you select audio category), find your file(s) you wish to use as custom notifications and hold down (long press), when options appear at bottom-select move and then move to notifications folder. This will populate your custom tones in with default tones.

 

Per-person notifications can be changed by selecting individual contact and editing, at bottom of editing there is advanced button, within this will let you select your choice of notification. 

 

Hope this helps!

Anoniimous
Student
Options

I don't know how old the above posts or solution are but with updated S9 as of Jan 2020 when I copy an mp3 file into notification folder it does not appear among the list of default sounds. Seems S9 now limits sounds to only default sounds? Or how can I do it?

The_Otter
First Poster
Options

@Niall0 wrote:
Thanks! That's working now.

To clarify for anyone else who's looking for this answer:

- The folder to put the files into is called "Notifications".

- MP3 format is acceptable (I don't know what others might be) but you'll need to remove all tags and other metadata before it will appear in the Notification Sounds list.

What do you mean by "remove all tags and metadata"? Also, will this work if I want to set an alarm rather than a ringtone?

0 Likes