Should You Build Carousels in the Edits App?
Instagram put a carousel editor inside Edits, its own free app, and the obvious question is whether it earns a place in your week.
I have written the walkthrough for turning it on, because it is buried in Labs and most people cannot find it. This is the other half. Having found it, should you use it?
The answer depends on one thing, and it is not the feature list.
What it does well
It is built by the people who own the feed. Aspect ratios are right by default. Nothing gets cropped strangely on upload. That sounds small until you have spent an afternoon fixing a carousel that looked fine in another app and wrong on the profile.
It lives next to where you post. No exporting, no transferring to your phone, no cloud folder. The distance between making and publishing is most of why content does not go out, and this shortens it.
It is free with no export limits or watermarks. For anyone who has hit a paywall halfway through a design, that matters.
It handles the awkward bit of carousels. Keeping slides visually consistent across eight frames is fiddly everywhere else. Building them in one place, in sequence, is the right shape for the job.
Your brand is in there. This is the part people assume is missing and it is not. You can set custom brand colours, and the font library is enormous. If you wrote this tool off as a toy because you have a brand to hold to, that assumption is worth rechecking.
It is not only for carousels. There are multiple media source sizes in there, so stories come out of the same place. That is a bigger deal than the carousel editor by itself, because it means one tool covers most of what you post rather than being a single-format detour. I will do a separate post on the stories side.
Where it falls short
It is young, and it is still glitchy. The carousel editor arrived through Labs, which is Instagram’s word for “we are still deciding,” and it behaves like it. Things move between updates and it will occasionally do something you did not ask it to. Nothing fatal, and enough to be irritating on a deadline. Do not build a client deliverable in it the hour before it is due.
When it works, what comes out is beautiful. That is the frustrating part. It is a rough tool making lovely carousels, which is why I keep going back to it instead of writing it off.
It is phone-first. If you write on a laptop, or your carousels are dense with text you want to edit on a real keyboard, you will fight it.
There is no shared library, and for teams that is the dealbreaker. Your projects live in your Edits, on your phone. If three people make content for one account, each of them can only see what they made. Nobody can pick up someone else’s half-finished carousel, nobody can reuse the slide a colleague built last week, and there is no single place the account’s work lives. For a solo operator that costs nothing. For an account with a VA, a designer and an owner all contributing, it is a serious flaw and the main reason a larger team will stay where they are.
The glitches are the real cost for everyone else. Not the feature set. On a normal week it is a minor tax. On a deadline it is the reason to open something else.
So who should use it
Use it if you are the one making and posting, on your phone, and your carousels are mostly text over photos or simple frames. That is a large share of local businesses, agents and trades, and for those people it removes a step and a subscription.
Skip it if more than one person makes your content. This is the clearest no. With a VA, a designer and an owner all contributing, the lack of a shared library is a daily problem rather than an inconvenience. Nothing to do with the brand tools, which are good.
Try it for one batch either way. The honest test is whether your carousels go out at all. Make a week’s worth in it. If you published more than usual, that is your answer, and it is the only measure that matters.
The third option, which is what most people are doing
Leaving AI out of this comparison would be dishonest, because a lot of us are making carousels with it now, me included.
It is fine to make carousels with AI. I do. Getting from a blank screen to eight slides of structure takes minutes instead of an hour, and that was always the slow part.
There are two caveats, and they are the whole difference between a carousel that works and one that gets scrolled past.
Use real photos. This is the big one. AI visual fatigue is real, and your audience has it whether or not they can name it. They have seen a thousand generated images this month and their eye has learned to skip them. A real photo of your job site, your crew, your hands, your street, stops that reflex on its own. Generated slides with your actual photographs in them read as yours. Generated slides with generated images read as nobody’s.
Keep your point of view and your voice. AI will hand you the sensible version of any argument, which is the version everyone else is also getting handed. Your take, your phrasing, the thing you would say out loud to a client, is what the tool cannot produce. Rewrite the words even when the structure is right.
And prompt for size, explicitly, every time. This is the practical one that will cost you an afternoon if nobody tells you. AI will happily hand you eight slides at eight slightly different dimensions, and you will not notice until they are on the profile and the crop is eating your text. State the exact size in the prompt, state that every slide must match it, and check the set before you upload rather than after.
Do those three and AI is a straightforward speed-up. Skip them and you have published something that looks and sounds like everything else in the feed, at inconsistent sizes, which is an expensive way to save an hour.
One line I hold: anything with a number on it, a client result, or a claim I am standing behind, I write myself. Not out of principle, out of self-interest. I have to defend it later and I want to know exactly where it came from.
So the real comparison is not Edits against Canva. It is AI for the structure, your photos and your voice over the top, and whichever editor gets it out the door.
The thing nobody says about carousel tools
The tool is rarely the reason carousels underperform.
A carousel fails when slide one does not earn slide two, when there is no reason to reach the end, and when the caption does not do its job. None of that is fixed by a better editor. The structure that works is here, and what makes people save one is here.
If your carousels are not landing, changing app will not change that. Changing the first slide might.
What I do, which is neither of the obvious answers
Here is my actual workflow, and it took me a while to land on it.
I trained AI to make carousels that look like I made them in Edits.
Think about what that solves. The reason to want Edits is the look, because what comes out of it when it behaves is genuinely beautiful. Every reason not to use it is operational: it is glitchy, it is phone-only, and there is no shared library if anyone else touches your content. None of those are about the output. They are about the tool.
So take the output and leave the tool. Build the Edits aesthetic into your prompt once, as a reference you reuse: the type treatment, the spacing, the colour behaviour, the way slides sit next to each other. Then you are generating in that style on a laptop, at any hour, with your team able to see it, and nothing crashes at slide six.
You still owe the same three things. Real photographs, because nothing kills the effect faster than generated imagery. Your own words over the top. And the exact slide size stated every time, in every prompt.
What that leaves is the good part of Edits without any of the reasons people abandon it in week three.
Use Edits itself for the reactive stuff. The answer to a question a client asked this morning, the three-slide explainer, the thing you would not otherwise make because opening a design tool felt like too much. It is right next to the post button and that is worth real money on a busy day.
That is the honest split. The app for speed, the trained prompt for volume, and the look carried across both.
Want your carousel system built once and reused?
Book a call. Bring your last five carousels and I will tell you whether the problem is the tool, the structure, or the first slide. It is usually the first slide.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Edits carousel editor free?
Yes, Edits is Instagram’s own free app, with no watermark and no export limit.
Where is the carousel editor in Edits?
Behind the Labs section, which is why most people cannot find it. The step-by-step is in how to turn on the carousel editor.
Is it better than Canva for carousels?
Closer than people assume for a solo operator. Edits has custom brand colours and an enormous font library, so the usual reason to dismiss it does not hold. It wins on speed and on being next to the post button, and it loses on stability, on being phone-only, and on having no shared library. If you work alone from your phone, it is worth a real trial. If a team touches your content, stay where you are.
What is the most efficient way to make carousels?
Train AI to produce the Edits look, then generate there instead. The reason to want Edits is the output, and every reason not to use it is operational: glitches, phone-only, no shared library. Building the aesthetic into a reusable prompt keeps the look and drops all three problems. Use the app itself for fast reactive posts.
Can a team work in the Edits app together?
No, and it is the biggest limitation. Projects live in each person’s own Edits on their own phone, so if three people make content for one account, each can only see their own work. No shared library, no picking up someone else’s draft, no reusing a colleague’s slide.
Will using Instagram’s own app boost my reach?
There is no evidence that it does, and I would not choose a tool on that basis. Use it because it gets more content out of you, which does affect reach.
Should I move my whole workflow into Edits?
No. It arrived through Labs and it is still changing. Use it for fast reactive carousels and keep your brand work where your templates live.
Is the Edits carousel editor buggy?
It is still rough. It came out of Labs, things shift between updates, and it will occasionally do something you did not ask for. What it produces when it behaves is genuinely beautiful, which is why it is worth the irritation, and why I would not open it an hour before a client deadline.
Should I use AI to make carousels?
Yes, with three caveats. Use real photographs rather than generated images, because AI visual fatigue is real and people skip generated pictures without deciding to. Keep your own point of view and phrasing, because AI gives everyone the same sensible version of an argument. And prompt explicitly for the exact slide size every time, or you will get eight slides at eight slightly different dimensions and find out after they are on your profile.
Why do real photos matter so much in an AI carousel?
Because the eye has learned to skip generated images. A real photo of your work, your crew or your street breaks that reflex, and it is the single cheapest way to stop a carousel looking like everybody else’s.
Can I trust AI with the numbers in a carousel?
Write those yourself. Anything with a client result or a claim attached is something you will have to defend later, and you want to know exactly where it came from.
Can you make stories in Edits too?
Yes. It carries multiple media source sizes, so stories come out of the same app. That is arguably a stronger reason to use it than the carousel editor, because it means one tool covers most of what you post. Separate post on that coming.
Does the tool affect whether a carousel performs?
Barely. Carousels fail on the first slide, on giving no reason to swipe, and on a weak caption. A better editor fixes none of those.