How to Make a Slideshow on Squarespace Easily 2026

Open your Squarespace site and enter the page editor for whichever page will hold the slideshow — in this example, a furniture and woodworking site called "PMN Online YT" with a hero section reading "Designed for Life" and navigation for About, Services, Gallery, and Book a Consultation. The top bar shows Save, Exit, and undo/redo controls, plus a Page label confirming you're editing the Home page and that it's currently Published — worth noting, since changes here go live once saved rather than sitting in a draft state.

Click the add-content control where you want the slideshow to sit, which opens the Add a Section panel. Down the left side is a full list of section types — Testimonials, Events, Quotes, Digital Products, Scheduling, Donations, and further down, Images, Videos, Menus, Forms, and Charts. Selecting Images shows a live preview on the right with layout options, and a tooltip explains what these sections actually do: "These sections let you quickly add content items and switch between layouts without having to manually rearrange them." That's the key detail — the layout, including slideshow, is something you can change afterward without rebuilding the block.

Once the gallery is added to the page, open its layout options — the same panel that let you choose Images in the first place also lets you switch between grid, carousel, and slideshow display styles for the same set of photos. Pick slideshow, and the block reflows to show one image at a time with navigation between them, rather than the grid of thumbnails you started with.

With the gallery selected, its settings panel opens with two tabs, Gallery and Colors. Under Gallery, a slider near the top controls image sizing, and below that sit the options that matter most for a slideshow: a Captions toggle to show or hide text under each image, an Animation dropdown defaulting to "Site Default" but changeable per-block, a Lightbox toggle that lets visitors click an image to view it enlarged, and a Divider toggle for adding a visual line under the section. There's also an Anchor Link field if you want to link directly to this slideshow from elsewhere on the page.

Add the photos you want in the rotation directly into the gallery block, and drag them into the order you want them to appear. Since the tooltip from the Add a Section step already confirmed this layout lets you rearrange content without rebuilding it, feel free to add more images than you need at first and trim or reorder later rather than getting the set perfect on the first pass.

Before publishing, compress your images so the slideshow loads quickly — large, uncompressed photos are the most common reason a slideshow feels sluggish on load. Use the device toggle near the top of the editor to preview how the slideshow looks on mobile, since captions and navigation controls that look fine on desktop can crowd a small screen, and it's easier to adjust settings now than after visitors start seeing it.