How to make an Instagram carousel on iPhone or Android without installing an app

To make an Instagram carousel on iPhone or Android without installing an app, open an editor that runs in the browser, compose your slides, save them to Photos, then post them from Instagram like any other set of photos. With SwipeAtelier, all of this happens in Safari, Chrome or another mobile browser, for free, with no account and no watermark. Here is the whole process, from the first screen to the published post.

Why use the browser instead of an app

An app you install takes up space, needs updates, and sometimes requires an account or a subscription to remove a watermark. For the occasional carousel, that's a lot.

A web tool opens like a page. It takes up nothing more than the browser cache and works the same way on iPhone, Android, tablet and computer. So you can start where your photos already are, which most of the time means your phone.

Another useful point on mobile: your photos aren't sent to any server. They are processed by the browser, on the device. There is nothing to upload, so no waiting on a weak connection and no mobile data used for your images. The details are on the privacy page.

Make the carousel on iPhone or Android, step by step

1. Open the tool in your browser. No sign-up is required.
2. Choose the format. Portrait 4:5 (1080 × 1350) and tall portrait 3:4 (1080 × 1440) take up more screen height in the feed than square. Every image in a carousel takes the format of the first one, so this choice applies to the whole set. If you're unsure, check the carousel size guide.
3. Set the number of slides, from 1 to 20. You can change it at any time.
4. Choose a template. Layouts are calculated for your format and number of slides: one photo per slide, panorama, seamless strips, grids, mosaics, scattered photos. Switching templates keeps the photos you've already placed, so you can try several.
5. Add your photos from your phone's photo library, place them in the frames and crop them.
6. Adjust. Brightness, contrast, saturation, filters, text, shapes, stickers, background color or gradient: everything works by touch.
7. Check the preview. It swipes through the carousel as Instagram does, so you can check how the slides join before you export.

The idea of a single canvas, cut into images that line up to the pixel, is introduced on the seamless carousel maker page; the seamless carousel guide walks through it step by step.

Two-finger gestures, for working without a mouse

A small screen doesn't stop you from being precise, provided you use the right gestures:

• One finger to select an element and move it.
• Two fingers pinching in or out to zoom.
• Two fingers twisting to rotate, handy for tilting a photo.
• Continuous zoom to get close to a detail, such as the exact spot where a photo crosses the cut between two slides, then return to the overall view.

A slip of the finger is never a big deal: undo and redo are available at any time, and the project is saved automatically as you make changes. If you close the tab or take a call, you'll find your work in the "My collages" gallery.

Adding the tool to your home screen: optional, but handy

Nothing requires you to install anything. But if you use the tool regularly, you can add it to your home screen: it's an installable web app (PWA), offered by the browser itself rather than by an app store.

• On iPhone, in Safari: tap the share button, then "Add to Home Screen".
• On Android, in Chrome: open the browser menu, then choose the option to install or add to the home screen.

The exact wording varies by browser and version. Once added, the tool opens full screen from an icon, like a regular app, with no address bar.

Using the tool offline

After a first visit, the tool works without a connection. You can put a carousel together on a train, on a plane or abroad without a data plan: the photos come from your phone, the processing happens on your phone, and so does the export.

You only need a connection again when it's time to post on Instagram.

The other tools in the app work the same way on a phone. To resize photos for Instagram for a story or a square post, add them from your phone and save the results straight back to Photos.

One clarification that follows from how this works: projects are saved in the browser's storage, on the device. They don't sync with your computer or another phone, and clearing your browser data deletes them. To keep a finished carousel, export it.

Saving the images to Photos

On mobile, export goes through the phone's share sheet, the one that opens when you share a photo or a link.

1. Tap the export button and choose the file format: JPEG, lightweight and recommended for photos, or PNG, lossless. The article on JPEG vs PNG for Instagram will help you decide.
2. The share sheet opens with the carousel's images.
3. Choose the option to save the images. They land in your photo library, in carousel order.

So there's no archive to unzip and no hunting for files in a downloads folder: the images are right where Instagram will look for them.

Posting the carousel from the Instagram app

The tool doesn't post for you: publishing happens in Instagram.

1. Create a new post.
2. Turn on multiple selection and tap the images in order, from first to last. A number appears on each one: check that it matches the order you want.
3. Check the format. The first image sets the format for the rest; if your images were exported in the right format, just make sure Instagram isn't cropping them on the selection screen.
4. Avoid applying an Instagram filter slide by slide: on a seamless carousel, treating one image differently from the next would make the seam visible.
5. Add the caption and post. To keep its line breaks, write it first in the Instagram caption formatter, which also runs in the phone's browser, then paste it.

Before you confirm, swipe through the carousel on Instagram's preview screen. If a seam looks off, the selection order is almost always the cause.