How to make a TikTok photo carousel

A TikTok photo carousel is a set of images that people swipe through, posted as one photo post. You can make one in an afternoon with a design tool and your phone. This guide walks through it from the first idea to the caption, and ends with a checklist you can reuse. If the terms are new, what TikTok photo mode is explains them.

1. Choose one idea

A carousel works when it says one thing. Write that thing as a single sentence before you open any design tool. For a product it is usually a customer problem, a small how-to, or a before and after. “Why invoices get sent late” is an idea. “Everything our invoicing app does” is a feature list, and it is too much for one post.

2. Outline the slides

Plan the sequence on paper first. A simple structure:

1. Slide 1, the hook. The problem or the question, in the words your customer would use.
2. Slides 2 to 4, the body. One point per slide. Each should make sense on its own.
3. The last slide, the next step. The product name and what to do next.

TikTok lets you add up to 35 photos to a photo post, but a carousel only needs to be as long as its idea. A handful of slides is a good place to start; you can lengthen the next one if people stay to the end.

3. Design the slides

You can use any design tool that exports images, such as Canva, Figma, or the slide editor you already use, plus screenshots from your own product. Whatever you pick, a few habits keep carousels readable:

• Go vertical. Portrait images, like a phone screen, tend to fill the screen best. Preview in the app and adjust.
• Keep text short and large. If you cannot read it at arm’s length on a phone, it is too small.
• Leave space at the edges. The app draws its own buttons and captions over the images, so keep key words away from the borders.
• Repeat one style. The same font, colours and layout across slides make the set feel like one piece.
• Show the real product. At least one slide should use a screenshot of your actual interface.

Export each slide as an image and keep them in order, for example by numbering the file names, so you can pick them in sequence later.

4. Write the caption

The caption, which TikTok calls the description, carries what the slides cannot: a sentence of context, your product’s name and a few hashtags that fit the topic. Keep it short. Write it like you would explain the idea to a colleague, not like an advertisement.

5. Upload the photos in the TikTok app

TikTok’s help center describes posting photos from the app. Here are the steps it lists:

1. Tap Add post + at the bottom of the app.
2. Tap Photo, then Upload, and select your photos in order. You can add up to 35.
3. Tap Next. Swipe through the photos to check them, and add a filter, sound, text or stickers, or crop, if you want to.
4. Tap Next again to edit the cover, add the description and hashtags, tag people, add a location or a link, and manage who can view the post.
5. Tap Post to publish, or Drafts to save it.

Two things are worth checking before you tap Post. New posts keep the privacy setting of your previous post, so confirm who can see this one. And swipe through the slides once more on the final screen: this is the cheapest moment to catch a typo.

6. Add sound and choose your moment

Sound is added in the editing step in the app, and you can save the post as a draft and come back to it. Drafts are visible only to you on your profile, so a draft is a safe place to leave a carousel until you are ready.

7. Look back after a few days

When a post has been live for a few days, open TikTok’s analytics for your account and see what people did with it. One post says little, so wait until you have several and compare which first slides and which ideas drew a response. Change one thing at a time.

A checklist you can reuse

• One idea, written as one sentence.
• A first slide that states the problem.
• One point per slide, in large text.
• A real screen of your product on at least one slide.
• A closing slide with the next step.
• A short caption with the product name.
• Privacy setting checked, slides checked once more.

Making them faster

The slow part of a carousel is usually the design and the writing, not the upload. Zliding’s Autopilot does that part from your website: it creates TikTok photo posts, you can edit the text and images at any time, and on a paid plan it can publish them to TikTok for you, one a day. Paste your site into the form below to start with two free weeks and 14 posts, with no credit card. The pricing page shows what the paid plans add, and how to market your app on TikTok covers what to say in them.