An Instagram carousel is a single post containing up to 20 images or videos that viewers swipe through. It’s the format algorithms treat most generously — each slide is a fresh chance to stop the scroll, and Instagram will even re-serve a carousel to the same viewer starting from a later slide if they didn’t engage the first time.

Here’s how to make one, and — the part most guides skip — how to make one people actually finish.

Posting a carousel, step by step

Tap + and choose Post.
Tap the stacked-squares icon above your gallery to enter multi-select.
Pick your slides in order — the selection number becomes the slide order.
Apply edits or filters (they apply per-slide), tap Next.
Write the caption, tag, and share.

To post from a computer or on a schedule, you’ll need Instagram’s API via a publishing tool — manual posting from the web supports carousels but scheduling does not.

A few mechanics worth knowing:

All slides share the first slide’s aspect ratio. Design everything at 1080 × 1350 (4:5) — the full sizing rules are in our carousel size guide.
You can delete a slide from a published carousel (tap ⋯ → Edit → trash icon on the slide) but you can’t add or reorder after publishing.
Mixing photos and videos is allowed; videos autoplay as viewers reach them.

The structure that earns swipes

A carousel is a tiny narrative. The accounts that grow with them almost all follow the same skeleton:

Slide 1 — the hook. One bold claim, question, or number. Its only job is to interrupt the scroll. If slide 1 tries to inform, the carousel dies there.

Slide 2 — the promise. Tell them what they’ll have by the last slide. This is what converts a pause into a swipe.

Slides 3 to N−1 — one idea per slide. The moment a slide needs two thoughts, split it. Dense slides are where swipe-through goes to die.

Last slide — the ask. Save, share, follow, or comment. Saves and shares are weighted heavily by ranking; asking for them is not cringe, it’s arithmetic.

Keep it to 6–10 slides. Twenty is allowed; almost nobody should use twenty.

Writing slides people can actually read

Under ~20 words per slide. Carousels are read at arm’s length in about 1.5 seconds per slide.
One font, two sizes. A headline size and a body size. Every additional style is noise.
Consistent placement. Put the text block in the same position on every slide so eyes never have to hunt.
Contrast beats decoration. Dark text on light backgrounds (or the inverse) outperforms pretty-but-faint every time.

The real problem isn’t making one carousel

Following this guide once takes twenty minutes. The compounding results come from doing it daily — and that’s a different problem: ideas run out around week two, design drifts, and the queue quietly stops.

That’s the problem CarouselMaker is built for. Give it a brief once, and it writes, designs, and publishes a carousel a day — each post written fresh an hour before it goes out, with a review window in case you want the final word. Here’s how Autopilot works →