On 7 October 2026 Instagram added carousel building to Edits, its free editing app. Until now Edits was a video editor only; now you can lay photos and clips out across slides, caption them with the same fonts you use on your Reels, and cut your own stickers out of any image. For a creator that means one thing: carousels and Reels finally live in the same app, in the same visual style, with no subscription and no shuffling files between tools.
What was added
Edits is Instagram's free app for vertical video: timeline, voiceover, captions, effects. It could not touch carousels at all. A multi-slide post had to be built either in a third-party editor or inside Instagram itself, where the only tools are a filter and a crop.
The app now has a dedicated carousel mode. Instagram describes it like this: "Add photos and videos, experiment with layouts, use fonts and text styles, and create your own stickers."
The difference from building a carousel inside Instagram is that this is a real editor, not a publishing screen. Slides sit on one canvas, elements move between them, and effects that used to be video-only now apply to stills as well.
Dan Moreno, a design engineer on the Edits team, framed it this way: "Carousels are a powerful way to tell your stories, letting you string together photos and videos into something bigger."
What the carousel editor does
| Tool | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Layouts | Ready-made grids: where the image, the caption and the headline sit on a slide |
| Photos and video mixed | A still and a short clip can sit side by side in the same carousel |
| Fonts and text styles | The same ones you already set up for your Reels in Edits |
| Saved presets | Fonts, colours, audio and text styles carry over from your earlier projects |
| Overlays and effects | Previously video-only, they now apply to photos too |
| Your own stickers | The cutout tool turns anything you isolate from a photo into a reusable sticker |
| Filters and adjustments | Colour grading, scaling, rotation — the same as in the video side of the app |
| Slide handling | Add, duplicate, reorder |
| Elements across slides | A photo or a headline can continue from one slide into the next, like a magazine spread |
That last row is the thing Instagram's own composer cannot do. One wide image cut across three slides reads as a single panorama as the viewer swipes; the same trick works with a headline that finishes on the following slide.
How to build one, step by step
- Open Edits and go to the Projects tab.
- Tap "+" and choose the carousel option.
- Drop in your photos and clips — the order can be changed later.
- Pick a layout. If you want a spread, drag an image or a headline past the edge of the slide so it carries into the next one.
- Caption the slides. Fonts and colours you already use in your videos are sitting in your saved presets, so the carousel comes out in the same style as the rest of your feed.
- Cut a sticker if you need a recurring element: a logo, a signature, a mascot. It is saved and available in later posts.
- Publish straight to Instagram from Edits, or download the finished slides and post them elsewhere.
Step 7 matters more than it looks: the export happens without a second render, so the same set of slides can go out on any other platform that supports multi-image posts.
Why carousels are the cheap format
A carousel needs no shoot. Screenshots, a breakdown of someone else's video, a run of frames, a table of numbers, a before-and-after — all of it comes together in an evening from what is already on your phone. When you are out of filming ideas, this is how you stay in the feed anyway.
The number Instagram leans on: according to research by Buffer, carousel posts average roughly 12% more engagement per post than other formats. That is a third-party measurement, not Instagram's own, so treat it as a direction rather than a promise.
There is also a feed mechanic behind it. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has explained that multiple slides give a post several chances to appear: if someone swiped through only the first frames, the carousel can resurface for them later. A single image never gets that second pass.
What it gives a short-video creator
A carousel does not replace Reels, but it covers three jobs that video handles badly.
Explaining a sequence. A seven-step instruction gets scrubbed through in a video; in a carousel the reader sets the pace and can go back to the slide they need.
Showing numbers. A table, a price list, a before-and-after comparison is unreadable in a clip. As a slide, it is the kind of thing people save.
Keeping one look. Until now the videos came out of Edits and the carousels out of some other editor, and the typefaces drifted apart. Now one set of fonts and colours covers both.
How to read your own Reels stats first, so you know which topics are worth turning into a carousel at all, is covered in our piece on the AI assistant inside Edits.
What it gives a brand
For a brand, a carousel is a low-cost ad format for everything where a video is overkill: an unboxing broken into steps, a response to a review, a pricing explainer, a stack of proof points. A creator does not need a shoot day for that, which pulls the cost of the placement down.
The cutout tool is worth a separate mention. One sticker with your logo or campaign mark can be dropped into every slide of every creator working on the brief — recognition builds faster that way than through captions.
Where it works
| Platform | Status |
|---|---|
| iOS | Live |
| Android | Promised, no date given |
| Desktop | Meta showed a desktop version of Edits in June 2026; carousels there have not been announced |
What is still unclear
- the maximum number of slides the editor supports — Instagram has not named a figure;
- when the Android version ships;
- whether the carousel mode has reached every country yet: the update is rolling out gradually;
- whether carousels will come to the desktop version of Edits.
FAQ
How do you make a carousel on Instagram?
The simple way is to select several photos while creating a post in Instagram itself. The designed way is to build the slides in Edits: it has layouts, fonts, stickers and the option to stretch an image across several slides, and you can publish straight from there.
Is Edits free?
Yes, the app is free and so is the carousel editor. No separate subscription is required.
Can you mix photos and video in one carousel?
Yes. The editor will put a still and a short clip on neighbouring slides.
How do you make your own sticker in Edits?
With the cutout tool: you isolate an object in a photo, it becomes a sticker and it is saved for reuse in later posts.
Does the carousel editor work on Android?
Not yet. Instagram has promised an Android version but has not given a date.
Can you post a carousel built in Edits somewhere other than Instagram?
Yes. The finished slides download out of the app without a second export, and you publish them wherever you like.
Related reading
- How to get more views on Reels: Instagram's Edits AI reads your stats
- How to create an AI influencer: Higgsfield drops it into real footage
- Clipping for brands in 2026: what 26 creator economy experts say
A carousel is the right format when you need to explain something rather than show it. If you want that kind of post to pay, on Prime Oracles a brand sets up a brief through "Create campaign", and a creator opens the "Content rewards" section, hits "Take on task" and gets paid for the views their material earns.