Using custom sounds for notifications (Samsung Galaxy S9)

[Niall0]

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?)

[Anoniimous]

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@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.

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I found just placing an mp3 I had downloaded In the notification folder did not work I.e. the file did not show up. Maybe as above removing all metadata and tags works.

In the end I found using Zedge or similar to find and download ring or notification tones does whatever is required for the tone to show up as a valid tone...

[Niall0]

"remove all tags and metadata" - the MP3 format includes a header block which contains details such as track title, album, artist, genre, year of release, cover art image, and many other pieces of data.

You need to remove all of those before the phone will recognise the file as usable. I use Softpointer's "Tag&Rename" for this sort of operation, but there are plenty of other tools available -- if you're using Windows, you can right-click on the file to get the Properties screen; the Details tab might allow you to delete enough of the information.

You can use MP3s for alarms as well, but:

- Unlike previous models of the phone, the S9 imposes a 4-second fade-in on the track. This fade-in cannot be avoided using any controls on the phone (or if it can, the controls are not in an obvious place -- yay Samsung, making life "better" for everyone!), so if (like me) you want the sudden loud track intro to wake you up, you have to add about 4.5 seconds of silence to the start of every track you want to use as an alarm. (I recommend NCH Software's "WavePad" for this sort of thing.)

- Put them in the Alarms folder instead of Notifications.

Hope that helps.

[KristianLaVey]

Not sure if this will help anyone else but my old A8 didn't even have a Notifications folder (just a Ringtones one).

So, I created one at the same level, copied the sounds I wanted into the new folder and hey ho it worked! 

I've tested it out including switching my phone off completely and back on and it still works.

Not sure if a future software update will revert everything back but if it does it's not too hard to put back.

[Phones2]

Download 3rd party app -ZEDGE. 

Problem solved...

[Hugnjan]

This worked for me. Thanks 😊

[pjharg66]

Sorry I jumped to conclusions. Now that I've moved all of the sound files I want into the notification folder and restarted the phone, when I open the notification settings for X-Matters or Gmail, Messages etc, and select each level of alert,  each one has a setting for a specific sound. I'm SO happy now. It's also quite possible it was there all along. 🙄

Thanks for all of the tips! 

[pjharg66]

Ok this does work to fix the individual ringtones and even the vibration pattern for contacts, but still no way to set notifications sounds specific to each app. like before. 

Thanks

[iHateMyUserName]

You're a life saver!  I banged my head against the wall trying to get mp3 files to work until I found your mention of removing the tags.  They worked as soon as I striped the tags.  Oddly, I had used these exact same mp3 files before on another identical phone without striping the tags?!?

[Niall0]

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@iHateMyUserName wrote:

Oddly, I had used these exact same mp3 files before on another identical phone without striping the tags?!?

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Same here. The new software just isn't very good.

[ErinsFire]

OMG Scarecrowed  U r my hero! Worked like a charm, I'd struggled 4 couple weeks with this & U solved my dilemma in a few seconds! Thank U!