How to make a slideshow on TikTok.

Making one, step by step

TikTok does not use the word slideshow in its own help pages. The feature is a photo post, and it is one tap away from the video camera. Video and text posts start from the same button, as how to post on TikTok shows.

1. In the TikTok app, tap the Add post button at the bottom.
2. Tap Photo, then tap Upload to select photos from your device.
3. Pick your images in the order you want them.
4. Tap Next. Swipe to switch between photos and edit them: a filter, a sound, text, stickers, or a crop.
5. Tap Next again for the rest: Edit cover, Add description, Add hashtags, Tag people, Add a location, Add link, and the privacy settings.
6. Tap Post, or tap Drafts to finish it later.

There is a second kind of photo post. Tapping the record button instead of Upload takes a live photo, which is a single image rather than a set.

To edit the photos themselves, with templates, overlays or AI tools, see how to edit a photo on TikTok.

Two kinds of slideshow, and why yours may not swipe

A photo post is swipeable. The viewer moves through the images themselves, and the post waits for them.

The app also offers Templates on the same Add post screen, which build a set of photos into something that plays by itself, like a video. People who say their slideshow does not swipe have usually made one of these.

Neither is better. A swiped post suits a list someone wants to read, and a template suits a recap set to music. Instagram's version of the swiped post is the carousel, with a limit of 20 rather than 35, covered in the Instagram carousel guide.

How many photos a TikTok slideshow holds

You can add up to 35 photos. That is a large ceiling, and few posts should get near it: a slideshow is read, and every extra swipe is another place to stop. Every platform's photo and video limits are side by side in social media post sizes.

Sound, text and the cover

Three choices decide whether a slideshow gets watched, and all three are made on the editing screen.

• Sound. A photo post can carry a sound the way a video does, which is the difference between a slideshow and a silent gallery.
• Text. Text on the first image carries the whole post, because it is the only thing a scrolling viewer reads before deciding.
• The cover. Edit cover sits on the final screen and decides what the post looks like on your profile grid, months after it was posted.

Filters, stickers and a crop are applied per image, so a set of photos taken in different light can be brought closer together before posting.

Adding music, and what the audio does to the pacing

A slideshow with no audio is a gallery. The sound sets the mood of the whole post, so choose it deliberately:

• Pick the music before the images, when the post is a recap and the sound sets the mood.
• Pick it after, when the post is a list. Here the text carries the meaning and the audio is only atmosphere.
• Use a sound people are already searching for, within what TikTok allows for your account type; finding popular TikTok songs sets out the music rule for businesses.
• Check it at low volume. Plenty of people watch without sound, which is why the text has to work alone.

Image quality, text and editing each slide

The editing screen works per image, which is the part people underuse. Swipe between photos and each one takes its own filter, text, stickers or crop.

1. Use the original files. Images that have been through a messaging app are already compressed, and the slideshow shows it.
2. Shoot or crop vertical, so the images fill a phone screen rather than sitting in a band across the middle.
3. Keep text away from the edges, where the caption, the buttons and the username sit.
4. Put the promise on image one as text, in a size readable at arm's length.
5. Number the slides when the post is a list, because it tells people how much is left.

Why a slideshow instead of a video

The format has one real advantage, and it is not production time. A photo post moves at the viewer's pace. They swipe, they go back, they sit on the slide that matters to them.

A video runs at yours. That is the right choice when the content is a demonstration, and the wrong one when the content is a list of prices, a set of options, or anything someone wants to read twice.

Reach comparisons between the two formats circulate widely, but they come from third party samples rather than from TikTok. Your own account settles it after a few weeks of posting both.

Slideshows that work for a business account

Each of these has a shape, which is what makes it repeatable on a day when nobody feels creative.

1. The options. One product per slide, with the detail that separates it, and a last slide on how to order.
2. Before and after. The state, two slides of the work, the result, and what it cost or how long it took.
3. The answer to a real question. The question on slide one, the answer across the middle, the next step at the end.
4. What arrived this week. New stock, photographed on the same background, in the same order every time.
5. Screenshots. A message thread, a review, a receipt of your own work, with the private parts removed.
6. The mistake list. One mistake per slide with the fix under it, which is the easiest way to show expertise without a sales line.

Drafts, privacy and the setting that carries over

Tapping Drafts saves the post, and drafts are visible only to you on your profile, which makes a slideshow easy to build across two sittings.

One detail surprises people: a new post keeps the privacy setting of your previous post, so a post made private once hands that setting to the next one unless you change it. If a finished post is missing from your profile, check that first. Only public posts are shown under the posts tab, and private ones sit behind the lock icon. TikTok's scheduling instructions describe video on the desktop site, and how to schedule TikTok posts has the steps; for a photo post, the draft is the reliable way to prepare it ahead.

When the slideshow will not post

Editing a slideshow after you create it

The editing tools, filters, text, stickers and crop per image, are on the screens before the post goes out, so do the editing there.

That makes drafts the safety net. Create the post, tap Drafts, look at it once more the next day, then publish; nothing is visible to anyone else while it waits. If an image turns out to be wrong after publishing, deleting the post and making it again from the same photos takes a couple of minutes, because the real work was choosing them.

Making slideshows part of the week

The reason to use this format is capacity. A business that cannot film three videos a week can photograph its own work every day, and a slideshow turns that into posts.

1. Photograph as you work, not on a shoot day. The pictures are better and they already exist.
2. Keep one background for product shots, so a year of posts looks like one account.
3. Write slide one first. If the first line does not make someone swipe, the other thirty four do not matter.
4. Reuse the shapes above rather than inventing a format every time.
5. Mix in video, for everything that needs movement or a person talking to camera.

Words on the slides also help people find the post in search, as SEO for TikTok explains, and a few specific hashtags do the rest (finding trending TikTok hashtags). Planning this mix is part of TikTok marketing, and the free social media audit looks at whether your existing photos are already enough for a month of posts.

How we will test this

Not run yetEverything above comes from the published sources listed below, and nothing here is presented as something we measured. Our own test on live accounts has not been run yet.

This is the test we will run: we build photo posts on our own test accounts on iPhone and Android: three photos, thirty five photos, with and without a sound, saved as a draft and posted directly. We record the limits the app enforces, how long each slide is held, and what the profile grid shows afterwards.

Platforms change behavior without announcing it, so once the first test is run we repeat it every quarter, and this section will say when it was run and on which devices and app versions.

Sources

Read on September 23, 2026.

• TikTok Help Center, Making a post
• TikTok Help Center, Editing TikTok videos and photos
• TikTok Help Center, Tools for creators

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