Instagram is expanding the number of photos and videos that can be added to a single grid post, the company said today.
Each carousel post can now have up to 20 photos or videos. Users could previously add up to 10 pieces of content to each carousel post — something that’s colloquially known as a “photo dump.” The carousel feature was first rolled out to users in 2017.
Instagram has slowly added more features to the carousel function, including the ability to pair songs with your slides and collaborative posts that allow multiple users to add their content. A higher ceiling could be helpful for this specifically, especially if several people are contributing to a single carousel post.
The expansion brings Instagram more in line with TikTok, which currently supports posts of up to 35 photos. Though TikTok broke through as a shortform video app, photos have caught on surprisingly fast: there are meme formats and trends that use photos instead of clips, for example, and some users tell long stories in small pieces, slide by slide (by slide). Interestingly, this isn’t really part of the Instagram culture — but perhaps doubling the amount of space could create incentives to do this.
The new feature begins rolling out globally today.