How to Make a TikTok Slideshow People Actually Swipe Through

Somewhere right now, a person who swore they were going to bed is on slide six of a stranger's post about Lisbon apartments. They don't care about Lisbon. They care about slide seven.

That is the whole trick of the TikTok slideshow. It's a format that looks lazy (it's just photos) and behaves like a page-turner. People swipe at their own pace, which means you're not fighting a three-second attention span. You're fighting curiosity, one slide at a time. Win that fight a few times in a row and the algorithm notices.

Here's how to make one, and more usefully, how to make one people finish.

How to make a TikTok slideshow, step by step

TikTok calls these "photo posts" or Photo Mode. The steps are the same on iPhone and Android.

1. Open TikTok and tap the + button at the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap Upload in the bottom-right corner to open your camera roll.
3. Switch to the Photo tab (not Video) and select your images in the order you want them to appear. You can pick up to 35.
4. Tap Next. If TikTok offers to turn your photos into a video, decline. You want swipeable photos, not an auto-advancing reel.
5. Add a sound from the Add sound button at the top. A quiet, steady track works better than anything with a big drop, because people swipe at different speeds.
6. Add text to each slide with the Text tool, or bake it into the images beforehand (more on that below).
7. Write a caption, pick a cover, and post. The cover is your first slide, so treat it like a headline.

If your slides were designed on a computer in Canva or Figma, export them at the right size (below), send them to your phone, and post from the app.

The part nobody tells you: slide order is the content

Most slideshows fail on slide one. Not because the photo is bad, but because it doesn't create a reason to swipe.

A structure that works again and again:

• Slide 1, the question. A bold line of text over a strong image that sets up a gap: "I tried every budget planner app so you don't have to" or "Things I wish I knew before moving to Austin." The viewer should feel slightly incomplete.
• Slides 2 to 6, the payoffs. Each slide answers one small piece. One idea per slide, written so it makes sense on its own. If a slide needs the previous one to make sense, people drop.
• The second-to-last slide, the twist. The best entry, the surprising one, the "okay but this one is actually good." Save your strongest card for here, not slide two.
• Last slide, the landing. A conclusion, a recommendation, or a soft call to action ("save this for your next trip"). If you're promoting something, this is where it goes, and only here.

Five to ten slides is the sweet spot for most topics. Thirty-five is a ceiling, not a goal.

Size, text and the safe zone

Get the technical bits right once and you never think about them again.

TikTok's buttons and caption sit over the bottom and right side of the screen, and the top strip holds the For You and Following tabs. Keep your text in the middle band, roughly the central two-thirds of the image, or it will be hidden behind a heart icon. OpenClip's breakdown of slideshow specs has pixel-level safe zones if you're designing templates.

A note on text: short beats long. Six to twelve words per slide is plenty. If you need a paragraph, it's two slides.

Where the photos come from

You have three honest options:

• Your own photos. Best for credibility, especially for product, travel and "day in the life" posts.
• Stock or licensed images. Fine for listicles and advice posts, as long as the license allows commercial use.
• AI-generated images. Increasingly common for "aesthetic" slideshows and for brands that want a consistent face across posts. If the images show a realistic person who doesn't exist, label it. TikTok requires labels on realistic AI-generated content, and audiences are quick to call it out when you don't.

What you shouldn't do is lift another creator's slides and repost them. Recreating a format is fair game; copying the exact photos and text is how accounts get reported. We wrote a separate guide on recreating viral content without copying it.

Five slideshow formats that keep working

1. The ranked list. "Every protein bar I tried, ranked." Built-in tension: people swipe to find number one.
2. Before and after. Two to four slides. Works for renovations, design, fitness, apps, anything with a visible change.
3. The mistake list. "7 mistakes I made launching my app." Self-deprecating, useful, very saveable.
4. The mini guide. "How to plan a week of content in 30 minutes." Each slide is a step.
5. The story. A short narrative told in captions over photos. Harder to write, often the most shared.

If you want more, we keep a running list of TikTok slideshow ideas by niche.

Common mistakes

• Starting with your logo or product. Nobody swipes to learn more about an ad.
• Text that's too small. Check every slide on an actual phone before you post.
• Landscape photos. They shrink into a thin strip with blurred bars. Crop to 9:16 first.
• Too many slides with nothing new. If two slides say the same thing, cut one.
• Posting once and judging the format. Slideshows are a numbers game. Post several before you decide they don't work for you.

Making slideshows faster

Once you've found a structure that works, the bottleneck is volume. Designing ten slides by hand is fine once a week, not once a day. Tools like Canva templates help, and a few newer tools go further. Sharevia, which we build, can recreate the structure of a slideshow that's already working in your niche with your own brand and images, then schedule it. Whatever you use, the principle is the same: keep the format, change the substance.

For posting, you'll also want a plan for timing. Our guide on how to schedule TikTok posts covers what TikTok can and can't do natively.

The short version: one question, a handful of honest payoffs, and a last slide worth the swipe. People will finish what you start if you give them a reason to.

FAQ

How many photos can a TikTok slideshow have?

Up to 35 photos in a single photo post. Most slideshows that perform well use far fewer, usually between 5 and 10, because every extra slide is another chance for someone to leave.

What size should TikTok slideshow images be?

1080 by 1920 pixels, a 9:16 vertical ratio. Square or landscape images get padded with bars, which makes the post look like an afterthought.

Can you add music to a TikTok slideshow?

Yes. After you select your photos, tap Add sound and choose a track. Business accounts are limited to the Commercial Music Library, so check what's available before you build a post around a specific song.

Do TikTok slideshows get fewer views than videos?

Not necessarily. Photo posts are pushed into the same For You feed and often hold attention well because people swipe at their own pace. They don't count toward the Creator Rewards Program, though, which pays for original videos over a minute long.