How to make an Instagram carousel of your app screenshots

Updated October 30, 2026

An Instagram carousel of app screenshots works best as a short story: a first slide that says what the app does, then one feature per slide, each in the same frame, colors and position. Make every slide 4:5 at 1080 × 1350 pixels so none get cropped, keep the screenshots large with a few words of text, and finish with a slide that tells people where to get the app.

A carousel is a series of images people swipe through in a single post. For an app, it’s a natural fit: each slide can show one screen, and together they walk someone through what the app does. This guide covers the sizes, the structure and the details that make a carousel feel finished.

Sizes and limits

Use 4:5 portrait, 1080 × 1350 pixels. It’s the largest shape the feed shows, so your screenshots get the most room. A phone screenshot fits it well with a background around it.
Make every slide the same shape. Instagram shows all the slides in a carousel in one shape. If you mix square and portrait images, some will be cropped or padded to match. Exporting every slide at 1080 × 1350 avoids that entirely.
Up to 20 slides. Instagram raised the limit from 10 to 20 photos and videos per carousel in August 2024, as MacRumors reported. For an app, 5 to 8 slides is usually plenty; people lose interest long before 20.

Square (1:1, 1080 × 1080) also works if you prefer it, as long as every slide is square. See image sizes for sharing app screenshots for other platforms.

The first slide is the hook

Only the first slide shows in the feed until someone swipes. It has to stop the scroll and make the next slide worth seeing.

Show your best screen, the one that explains the app on its own.
Add a short headline, a few words that say what the app does or what problem it solves: “Transcribe audio offline” works; a tagline that needs explaining doesn’t.
Hint that there’s more. A small arrow or a phone that continues off the edge invites a swipe.

One idea per slide

Each slide after the first should show one feature, one screen, one benefit. Pair the screenshot with a short line of text that says what the screen does, not how. A typical structure for an app:

The hook: the app’s best screen and what it does.
The main feature, shown on the screen where it happens.
Two to four more features, one per slide.
A detail people care about, such as privacy, speed or offline use.
The last slide: the app icon, its name, and where to get it.

Put the text in the same place on every slide, either above or below the phone, and keep it short enough to read in a glance. Text that’s readable on your Mac can be tiny on a phone, so check each slide on your own phone before you post.

Keep the look consistent

A carousel feels designed when the slides belong together as you swipe:

The same device and frame on every slide, in the same color.
The same angle and position. If the phone jumps around between slides, the carousel feels jittery.
One background color or palette. A different shade per slide from the same family can work; unrelated colors don’t.
The same type size and position for the text.

A device frame that matches your brand helps here. A realistic frame looks polished; a minimal clay mockup in one of your app’s colors keeps the focus on the interface and ties the slides together.

Show more than one screen when it helps

Most slides should show a single phone, large. Two or three screens side by side work for a flow, like the steps of an export, or for showing the same screen in light and dark mode. Keep them big enough to read; at 1080 pixels wide, three phones in a row are small, so use a column or an overlapping layout instead.

Captions and alt text

Caption: say in the first line what the app is and who it’s for, since Instagram cuts longer captions off with “more”. Then add a sentence or two about what’s in the carousel and where to download the app.
Alt text: Instagram lets you write your own alt text for each image when you post. Describe what each screen shows, like “iPhone showing a list of voice recordings, one transcribing with a progress bar.” It helps people using screen readers and makes your post clearer.

Mistakes to avoid

Raw screenshots with no frame or background, which look like a camera roll dump.
Slides in different shapes, which get cropped.
Long paragraphs on a slide. If it needs a paragraph, it belongs in the caption.
Different devices, angles and colors on every slide.
No final slide telling people where to get the app.

Making the slides on a Mac

Any design app can make a carousel: set up a 1080 × 1350 artboard, place a framed screenshot on it, and duplicate it for each slide. How to put a screenshot in an iPhone frame covers the framing.

FeatureFrame makes it quicker. Set the canvas to 4:5, drop in a screenshot, and it finds the device and frames it in 3D. Pick a background and an angle, export, then drop the next screenshot onto the device to replace it; the canvas and background stay as they are, so the slides match. Export each slide at 1080p as a JPEG, ready for Instagram, and add your @handle as a small watermark if you like. Then put the slides in order in Instagram and post.

For more on presentation, see how to make screenshots look good on social media, or sharing app screenshots on X for the landscape version of the same images. Get FeatureFrame on the Mac App Store.