The Ring Doorbell’s standard ring is a very pleasant sound, but it also isn’t particularly exciting or expressive. Luckily, one of the Ring Doorbell’s best features is the ability to change this sound to a range of different options. But how exactly do you change the sound settings?
To change the sound of your Ring Doorbell, open the Ring app and tap the three-line icon in the top left. Select ‘Devices’ and then the device whose sound you’d like to adjust. Next, select ‘Device Settings’ and then ‘Alert Settings.’ Finally, select ‘App Alert Tones’ and you can change the sound.
Let’s take a closer look at how to change the indoor Ring Doorbell tone so that you can personalize your device. We’ll also look at whether you can adjust the device’s outdoor ring in the same way.
How to Change the Ring Doorbell’s Inside Sound
Something users that are new to the Ring Doorbell may not know is the fact that your Ring Doorbell has two different ringing sounds: one that notifies you that someone’s at the door and one that notifies the person at the door that you’ve been notified of their presence. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll refer to these as the inside ring and the outside ring, respectively.
The inside ring has two different possible outputs: your mobile device and your Ring Chime. Your mobile device could be any device that has the Ring app, and the Ring Chime (on Amazon) is a speaker that you can put in your home to play a sound when someone rings the bell.
Let’s go through how to change the sound on both of these.
How to Change Sound From Your Mobile Device
In order to change the sound of your Ring Doorbell from your mobile device, you’ll need to use the Ring app. Open the Ring app and tap the three lines icon in the top left corner of the screen.
This should bring up a drop down menu where you can select an option that says Devices (represented by an icon featuring three circles). Here, you need to tap the device for which you want to change the alert sound.
Afterward, you need to select Device Settings and then select Alert Settings. You should see an option that says App Alert Tones. This will bring up all of the available alert sounds that you can select for your device.
You can even select different sounds for different actions. For example, you can set one sound for motion alerts and a different sound for actual doorbell rings. This will make it so that you don’t even need to look at your phone to tell what alert you just received from your Ring Doorbell.
To add an additional mobile device to your Ring Doorbell, you can read our guide here.
How to Change Sound for Your Ring Chime
The steps for changing the sound of your Ring Chime are very similar to changing the phone notification noises. In order to change the sound for your Ring Chime, you’ll also need to use the Ring app. Begin by opening the app and tapping the three lines in the top left corner of the screen.
This should bring up a sidebar where you can see and select an option that says Devices. Here, you need to select the Chime that you want to change. Under your Chime, you should select a box that says Audio Settings.
Finally, you’ll see an option that says Chime Tones. Select this option and you’ll be able to choose the sound your Ring Chime makes when it alerts you.
Once again, you will have different options: Rings and Motions. Rings are the sound that your doorbell makes when someone rings the bell, and motions are the sound that the doorbell makes when it detects movement. Play around with these sounds and you’ll be able to tell which is which without even checking the door.
Can You Change the Ring Doorbell Sound From the Outside?
As we went over earlier, your Ring Doorbell has two different categories of sounds: inside rings and outside rings. The outside ring is the sound the doorbell makes outside to let the person ringing it know that pressing the button actually did something.
This outside ring prevents people from just hitting the doorbell over and over again thinking that it’s broken. By default, the outside ring makes a pretty standard notification sound. This noise is rather inoffensive and can even be pleasant for some people, but is it possible to change it?
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to change the sound of your Ring Doorbell’s outside ring. However, it’s possible to change the volume of the sound, and you can even turn off the noise entirely. Let’s go through how to do this.
How to Turn Off Ring Doorbell Sound From the Outside
Once again, in order to do action, you’ll need to use the Ring app. Begin by launching the app and selecting the three lines icon in the top left corner of the screen. From here, you need to select Settings.
In the Settings menu, select the option that says Device Settings and then select General Settings.
In the General Settings menu, you should see a slider bar that says Doorbell Ringer Volume. Sliding this bar to the left will turn down your outside ring, and sliding the bar to the right will turn it up.
If you want the volume of the outside ring to be entirely off, all you have to do is slide this bar to the left as far as it will go.
How to Get a Different Sound to Play
Despite the fact that you can’t get your Ring Doorbell to play a different sound outdoors, there are a couple of workarounds you can use if you really want a different sound to play. These often involve buying new devices, so they can be costly.
For example, the first way to get a different sound to play outside is to buy another Ring Chime and place it outside.
The Ring Chime is a device that rings when your doorbell is pressed, so even though it’s meant to alert those inside that the doorbell has been pressed, if you place it outside, it can instead alert the person that rang the doorbell.
As we’ve already discussed, the Ring Chime has several different sounds that you can set. All you have to do is change the Chime’s audio settings using the Ring app.
The next method is to use an Amazon Echo (on Amazon) with custom Alexa routines. If you put an Alexa speaker outside and set it to react when the doorbell is pressed, it will play any sound that you set. The best part of this is that by using an Echo, you can get your doorbell to make any sound you want — even including full songs.
Changing the Tone to Holiday Sounds
You read that right. Ring actually has several holiday-themed sounds that you can set around each holiday. For example, there are Halloween chimes, Christmas chimes, Hanukkah chimes, and even Thanksgiving chimes.
In order to set these festive chimes, you’ll need to open the Ring app and tap the three lines in the top left corner of the screen. From there, you need to select Devices and then the device you would like to add the sound to.
Once you’ve selected the device of your choice, select Audio Settings. Finally, select Chime Tones and you should see a complete list of all the possible chime tones you can select. These should include several holiday chimes, depending on what time of year it is.
If you don’t see any holiday chime tones despite the fact that a holiday is right around the corner, you may need to update the app. Once you’ve updated the app, you might need to wait a day or two for the holiday chimes to finally appear.