How To Change Your Ring Doorbell's Sound

In the olden days, if you wanted to replace the chime that your doorbell produced when pressed, you'd need to have a qualified electrician come out to service your home, disconnecting and reconnecting wires for a decent chunk of the afternoon. Hopefully, you really liked whatever chime you picked out, because if you wanted to change it again, that's another electrician visit and another indeterminate service period.

Thankfully, with the advent of digital video doorbells like Ring, we're well past the need for doorbell house calls. With a mounted Ring doorbell, plus a little help from the Ring mobile app, you can change your doorbell chime at a moment's notice with just a few quick taps. Not only that, but you can also customize the other alerts produced by your Ring doorbell, such as the motion detection alert from the camera. If a particular chime just isn't doing it for you, just swap it out.

Through the use of the Ring mobile app, you can immediately connect to any active Ring doorbell cam in your home and customize its settings. As a reminder, though, Ring doorbells on their own don't produce audible chimes. You'll need a Chime or Chime Pro device if you want that.

1. On your smartphone, open the Ring app.

2. Tap the three bars on the left of the dashboard to open the Menu panel.

3. Tap Devices.

4. Tap on the Ring Chime device that you want to customize.

5. Tap Audio Settings.

6. Tap Chime Tones.

You'll get a list of available chime tones that can play when the doorbell button is pressed — just tap whichever one you want, and it'll switch over instantly. Additionally, you can use the volume slider at the top of the screen to adjust how loudly the chime will sound. New chime tones are occasionally added with major Ring firmware updates and on holidays, so if you ever want to change up your home's vibe, just check the app.

The cool thing about a Ring device paired with a Chime device is that the chime doesn't only sound when someone pushes the doorbell. If your Ring device has a motion detection camera built-in, you can have the same or a different chime sound when the camera detects motion. This can be used both as a preemptive heads-up of when someone is coming to the door and as a simple security system. Customizing the motion alert chime is largely the same as customizing the doorbell chime.

1. On your smartphone, open the Ring app.

2. Tap the three bars on the left of the dashboard to open the Menu panel.

3. Tap Devices.

4. Tap on the Ring Chime device that you want to customize.

5. Tap Audio Settings.

6. Tap Chime Tones.

7. At the top of the screen, tap Motion to switch to the motion alert list.

Just like with the doorbell, you can set any of the available chimes to sound when motion is detected, as well as use the volume slider to adjust how loudly they sound.

If you have a particularly large house, or you're in a part of the house where you might not hear a chime clearly, you can use your phone as an extra layer of notification. Even if you didn't have a Chime device installed, your phone would still automatically send you a notification when the doorbell on a paired Ring device is pressed. As with a Chime device, you can customize the sound that plays on your phone when the doorbell notification comes in.

1. On your smartphone, open the Ring app.

2. Tap the three bars on the left of the dashboard to open the Menu panel.

3. Tap Devices.

4. Tap on the Ring device that you want to customize.

5. Tap Device Settings.

6. Tap Alert Settings.

7. Tap App Alert Tones.

You'll get the same list of chime tones for both doorbell presses and motion detection, as well as a slider to set the volume. The obvious difference is that, when the doorbell is pressed or motion is detected, the chime will sound directly from your phone rather than a separate device. As long as you have your phone nearby or on your person, you'll always hear it, even if you would otherwise miss the regular chime.