TikTok Slideshow Size and Specs (1080x1920, Up to 35 Photos)

The right TikTok slideshow size is 1080 by 1920 pixels, a vertical 9:16 frame, and you can put up to 35 photos in one slideshow. That covers most of what you need. The rest of this page is about the details that decide whether a slideshow looks sharp and readable or arrives cropped, soft and jumpy.

Most slideshow problems are not about taste. A word cut in half by the caption, a blurry headline or a slide that jumps as people swipe all come from a size or placement decision made too late. Get the frame right first, and the design work that follows stays where you put it.

TikTok slideshow size and specs at a glance

The photo count and the two text limits come from TikTok's own developer documentation for photo posts. The size and file types are what TikTok displays without cropping or softening, and what the major slideshow guides agree on.

Keep this table next to you when you set up a template. Every value in it is a decision you make once, at the start, rather than slide by slide.

Why 1080 by 1920 is the right size

A phone screen held upright is roughly 9:16, and so is the TikTok feed. A 1080 by 1920 slide fills it edge to edge. Anything wider gets letterboxed, with bars above and below; anything taller gets cropped.

Going bigger does not help. TikTok scales images down to fit the feed, so a 4K slide looks the same as a 1080 by 1920 one and only takes longer to upload. Going smaller does hurt: below about 720 by 1280, text on the slide starts to look soft. Since most slideshows carry their message in on-screen text, soft text is the failure that costs the most.

If your source photos are 4:3 or 3:4 straight from a phone camera, crop them to 9:16 before you add text. Cropping after the text is on usually cuts a word in half, and fixing it means redoing the layout of that slide.

The same order applies to screenshots, product shots and anything else you drop into a slide. Set the canvas to 1080 by 1920, place the image inside it, then write the text on top. Working the other way round, starting from the photo and stretching the canvas to fit, is how slides end up in a mix of sizes.

Can a TikTok slideshow be square or horizontal?

Yes, TikTok accepts square and horizontal images in a slideshow, but they do not fill the screen. A 1080 by 1080 square shows with empty space above and below it, and a horizontal image leaves even more.

Square is worth using in one case: when the same slides also go to Instagram or LinkedIn as a carousel, where square or 4:5 frames are the norm. One set of square slides then works everywhere, at the cost of a less immersive post on TikTok. If TikTok is the main target, stay vertical.

What to avoid is mixing frames in one post. A square slide between vertical ones makes the post jump as people swipe, and the jump is the moment a viewer notices the format instead of the content. Pick one frame per slideshow and export every slide at it.

How many photos should a TikTok slideshow have?

TikTok allows up to 35, and a slideshow needs at least two to give viewers something to swipe. Most slideshows that do well use 5 to 10. That is enough to deliver a list or a short story, and short enough that most viewers reach the last slide, which is where your call to action sits.

A useful rule: one idea per slide, plus a hook slide at the start and a closing slide at the end. A "5 tips" post is seven slides. A ten step tutorial is twelve. Counting this way before you design stops a slideshow from growing past what the idea needs.

The 35 photo ceiling is there for posts that really need it, such as a long recipe or a full product walkthrough. For most posts, more slides means more chances for a viewer to stop swiping before the end.

The safe zone: where to put text

The TikTok interface sits on top of your slides. The username and caption cover the bottom of the frame, and the like, comment, share and sound buttons run down the right edge. The top has the Following and For You tabs.

Keep important text inside the middle of the frame:

• Leave roughly the bottom fifth free of text; that is where the caption sits.
• Keep text away from the right edge, where the buttons are.
• Leave a margin at the top for the feed tabs.

Centered text a little above the middle of the slide is the safest place. It is also where the eye lands first. A template that fixes the text box in that area, on every slide, saves you from checking each one by hand before you post.

File type and file size

Use JPG for photos and PNG for slides that are mostly flat color and text, where JPG compression can blur the edges of letters. A slide with a photo background and a headline on top is still a photo, so JPG is the right choice there.

Keep each file reasonably small. A 1080 by 1920 JPG at good quality is usually a few hundred kilobytes, far below any upload limit. If a file comes out much larger, it was most likely exported at a higher resolution than TikTok will ever show, which brings you back to the point about 4K slides above.

Title and caption length

Photo posts carry two text fields. In TikTok's posting API, the title of a photo post is capped at 90 characters and the description at 4,000.

In the app, the caption you type works the same way: only the first line or two shows before "more", so lead with what the slideshow is about and the words someone would search for. Treat the first line as the headline of the post and everything after it as optional reading. The slides carry the story; the caption tells the right people that this slideshow is about the thing they were looking for.

Reusing slides on Instagram and LinkedIn

If you reuse the same slides elsewhere:

• Instagram carousel: up to 20 slides; 1080 x 1350 (4:5) or 1080 x 1080 (1:1) fill the feed best.
• LinkedIn document carousel: uploaded as a PDF; square or 4:5 pages read best.

A 9:16 slide works on Instagram too, but Instagram shows it at 4:5 in the feed, cutting off the top and bottom, so keep the text centered. The safe zone advice above already does most of that work: text placed a little above the middle of a 9:16 slide usually survives the 4:5 crop.

Getting the size right on every export

Exporting every slide at the right size, with text inside the safe zone, is the part of slideshow making that is easy to get wrong when you are in a hurry. The fix is to make the size a setting rather than a choice: save a 1080 by 1920 canvas with the text box already placed, and start every slideshow from it.

That matters even more when an AI agent makes the slides, because nobody checks each export by eye. With Viral Slide Post, an agent connects through a REST API, an MCP server or open source skills, writes the slideshow, makes the images and publishes it to TikTok and Instagram on schedule, and a dashboard does the same for people who would rather work by hand. It is on the waitlist now. New to slideshows? Start with how to make a TikTok slideshow.

What to remember about TikTok slideshow size

Make every slide 1080 by 1920 at 9:16, and never go below 720 by 1280 if the slide carries text. Bigger files do not look better on TikTok, they only upload slower. Crop photos to the frame before the text goes on, and keep one frame for the whole post.

Plan for 5 to 10 slides even though TikTok allows 35, with one idea per slide and a hook and a close around them. Keep text out of the bottom fifth, the right edge and the top margin, and center it a little above the middle. Use JPG for photos and PNG for flat text slides. Put the words people search for in the first line of the caption, and if the slides will also run as a carousel, square or 4:5 is the frame that travels best.