How to get your sounds into High Sierra for custom use

I have had a custom "new mail" sound for years and years.

A new machine arrived recently...well, ok, new to me. I have a 2011 IMac 27 inch. Same screen as I had at old job 5 yrs ago. Very nice. Very inexpensive, $650. Has High Sierra already.

So can I use my custom sound(s)? No, apparently not. Or not anything like the same way. Used to be that you could start Mail, go to Prefs, click the little menu for New Message Sound, there would be the standard list, and also a choice to add something to the list. So I had used that "add something" previously.

High Sierra: No such animal.

Finding the correctly explained solution was harder than it should have been, but the solution itself is pretty easy.

You have to have a sound file. It has to be ".aiff format". A tool like Audacity (free) will do the conversion for you, where ITunes will not. (Did it used to? Could swear that was once a possibility...)

You have to move that file into ~/Library/Sounds.

You can do this via Finder, with "Go To Folder" (aka "command-shift-G"), and enter ~/Library/.

You will then see the list of everything in Library. This folder used to be visible for you all the time, now it is not. This is Apple locking down things so you don't shoot yourself in the foot.

Find the Sounds folder, double click on it. Now drag your .aiff sound file in there.

Quit and restart Mail. Open Prefs. Click on the New Message Sound menu. Viola! Your sound is at the bottom of the list. Hooray!

I think this same approach is true for Sierra, and probably going backwards a while, altho previously you could also use the "add something" choice.

So I now have my new-mail sound back working again. And maybe I'll do some others now too.

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Ringtones are a different beast, but a similar process.