You can now share up to 20 photos in one Instagram post

Wait, didn't TikTok do this first?
 By 
Elena Cavender
 on 
Someone holding a phone with the word "Instagram" in the background bathed in pink light
I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened. Credit: SOPA Images / Contributor ' LightRocket via Getty Images

Goodbye photo dumps, hello Facebook albums. Instagram is no longer restricting carousels to 10 photos or videos. Now, you can post up to 20.

The art of an Instagram post has gone through many phases. What began as heavily filtered low-stakes shots morphed into pristine "aesthetic" photos and finally into the highly curated photo dump that started out fun and turned into a series of seemingly mandatory life updates — Mashable's Christianna Silva even called them cringe back in March. Now, with 20-slide posts, photo dumps might go the way of the Facebook album, which is extinct. Social media is nothing if not cyclical.

Instagram feeds are overwhelmed with sponsored posts and creators, making them practically un-scrollable. Instead of fixing the fact that you don't see the people you know's posts anymore and making the platform more usable, it's still chasing after TikTok's success.


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The update makes carousel posts on Instagram even more closely resemble TikTok's photo mode, which allows users to post up to 35 photos in a slideshow set to music. Last year, Instagram added the option for users to soundtrack their dumps, and now the length of dumps is more in line with photo mode.

What will Instagram's next nail in the coffin be?

Topics Instagram

Mashable Image
Elena Cavender

Elena is a tech reporter and the resident Gen Z expert at Mashable. She covers TikTok and digital trends. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in American History. Email her at [email protected] or follow her @ecaviar_.

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