The carousel on Instagram has always been a compromise. A gallery of photos and videos. One caption for everything. No way to write something different under the third image than under the first, so creators either crammed text straight into the image, or wrote one long caption under the whole series and hoped someone would read it to the end. Now Instagram is testing a feature that changes this: a caption for each slide individually. And it is happening exactly when the numbers are on the carousel’s side.

Single Caption or Multiple Captions

The new version of the editor offers two options after you upload photos or videos. Single Caption: one caption for the whole post, as it works today. Multiple Captions: a separate caption for each slide, added straight away while swiping through the slides during editing.

The feature was first spotted by Threads user Binita Shah, whose editor showed a notice that they could now add their own caption to each photo or video in the post. Instagram confirmed to Social Media Today that the feature is being tested.

This is not the first change to carousels in the past year. Last July, a test appeared that shows creators which specific photo or video frame was on screen when a user liked the post; the like is then attributed to that frame. Creator economy expert Lindsey Gamble, who had already predicted captions for individual slides as the logical next step back then, pointed this out.

In March this year came the option to rearrange carousel slides after publishing, by pressing and holding and dragging. (It is still not possible to add a new slide to a published carousel; that requires a new post.)

Each slide gets its own context

Taken together, these changes point in one direction. The carousel is ceasing to be a sequence of images with one caption under the whole series, and is becoming a format where each slide has its own place, its own performance data and its own caption. For creators and brands this changes one practical thing: where to put context. A tutorial, a walkthrough, an event recap, a product introduction: for all of these formats it makes sense to write the explanation right next to the slide it refers to, instead of drowning it in one long paragraph at the end.

This makes the carousel more modular and dynamic and easier to browse, because you won’t clutter the visuals with text.

For product carousels this applies twice over, now that at the end of March Instagram brought back affiliate links for creators. You can tag up to thirty products in one Reel, and the feature has so far launched in the USA, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Thailand. A caption on a specific slide is exactly where such context belongs.

Carousels attract more engagement than Reels

The timing makes sense. The numbers are now on the carousel’s side. Buffer’s State of Social Media Engagement 2026 report, based on an analysis of more than 52 million posts across ten platforms, gives carousels a median engagement rate of 6.90%. Single images get 4.44%. Reels get 3.31%. In a post, Lindsey Gamble cites an older Buffer figure, according to which carousels have about 12% more engagement per post; the direction is the same.

Reels still win in one area, however, and that is reach. They have roughly 36% more of it than carousels. Buffer itself sums this up by saying these are two platforms in one, depending on where you put your content: Reels as a reach machine, and carousels as the place where people like, comment and save more. And Instagram is now pouring new features into that second platform.

If this reminds you of something, that is no coincidence. Guides tried something similar. They launched in 2020 as a format for structured content on a single topic, something between a blog post and a curated noticeboard. They quietly disappeared in December 2023. Captions for individual slides, like data for individual slides and the ability to rearrange a carousel after publishing make the carousel almost the same thing that Guides promised, but built into a format that people open of their own accord.

Anyone who has been betting everything on Reels for reach is now getting a second format that deserves its own strategy. The carousel has stopped being a storage place for holiday photos and is becoming a tool for structured content that people actually go through slide by slide. It is a format where a direct relationship with the audience matters more than one-off reach. And the platform is making quite clear where it wants to take it.

By Tereza Tiller