The Homepage Carousel feature allows you to showcase multiple videos in a scrollable, interactive format right on your homepage. It’s a great way to highlight your brand identity, promote products, and guide users deeper into your site with shoppable links — all in one dynamic section.
What Can You Feature in the Carousel?
Use your homepage carousel to tell your brand story and guide customers through your top content.
Popular use cases:
Brand’s Unique Identity – Show what sets your brand apart.
Community / Influencers – Feature UGC, influencer shoutouts, or collabs.
Bestsellers – Highlight top-selling products with shoppable CTAs.
Promotions – Showcase seasonal offers or limited-time discounts.
Sizing / Matching / Choosing – Help customers with how-tos or guides.
Best Practices
To make the most out of your homepage carousel:
Add a Title – Provide context with a clear section heading.
Include Shoppable Links – Direct viewers to a product detail page (PDP) or collection.
Use Expanded Widget – Keep the experience embedded (vs. fullscreen pop-out) for seamless browsing.
Feature Multiple Videos – Keep the carousel lively and diverse.
Strategic Video Order – Prioritize key content first (e.g. bestsellers or promos up top).
Refresh Content Often – Keep the experience fresh and aligned with campaigns.
Steps on how to create
Click the Publish tab.
2.Click New Project.
3. Select the Homepage Spotlight card.
4. Click start creating.
How to Design/Customize Spotlight
Media tab - This is where you can control which videos you want to use in your Spotlight, and where the settings are also located.
Under the Media tab, you will see two subsections
Don’t have tagged videos yet? Here’s a help article to help you get started Tagging videos in Tolstoy library: How to Tag Products in Tolstoy
1. Playlist
When you click the "+ Add Playlist" button, you can choose from the different playlists in your Tolstoy account, including any custom playlists you’ve created.
On this page, you’ll see all the videos and images in your Spotlight project
Hover over the media and you will see two options:
Eye icon - Lets you hide or unhide the image or videos
Pin icon - Lets you pin the videos to retain the order, sequence or arrangement of the videos
📝 Note: Need to rearrange your videos? Simply drag and drop the media and pin to retain the order. See tutorial here.
Add Media - Lets you add more images and videos from your library
2. Settings - This is where you control how your gallery or videos behave.
Mode
PDP Mode - Only related the tagged videos will display
Non PDP Mode - All tagged videos are displayed, including those that are not related to the product.
Video Recency - Show only videos uploaded within a certain time period. This helps keep your gallery fresh with recent content.
Blacklist Playlists - Exclude videos from specific playlists. Use this if there are certain playlists you don’t want to appear in the gallery.
Design Tab - Where you can customize the appearance of your Spotlight
Minimum number of videos - Sets the smallest number of videos that must appear in the widget.
Mobile / Desktop toggle – Choose which layout to customize.
Video align – Position the video (center, left-to-right, etc.).
Autoscroll to next video – Automatically moves to the next video after finishing.
Card header text - Choose what shows at the top of each video card:
Product
Video name
None
Card subheader text - Choose what appears under the header:
Price
Text
None
Sizing Mode - Controls how cards expand:
Responsive – Adjusts based on screen size.
Fixed – Stays the same size.
Multi-Product Layout - How multiple products display inside a card:
Expand
Swipe
Drawer
Responsive Settings - Settings that adjust for different screen sizes.
Items per row – How many videos appear in one row.
Items per row (tablet) – Row count specifically for tablets.
Aspect ratio (W/H) – Shape of the video thumbnails.
Card panel width – Width of each video card.
Spacing between tiles – Space between each card.
Horizontal padding – Space on the left and right sides.
Border radius – How rounded the card corners are.
Display arrows – Show navigation arrows.
Display progress bar – Show video progress.
Product tile height – Set how tall product tiles are.
Fallback text - Text shown when no data (like product title) is available.
Autoplay - Automatically plays videos when visible.
Gap between video title and card – Adjust spacing.
Background color - Choose a card background color.
Background opacity - Controls transparency of the background.
Video name above card - Show/hide the video name above each card.
Video captions - Toggle captions on or off.
Settings Tab - where you can further configure language and additional tracking
Font facing language - ability to choose or change the language of this project
Google Analytics tracking – Allows you to add a Google Tag ID so you can track this specific project in your Google Analytics and monitor its performance.
Facebook Pixel tracking – Lets you add your Facebook Pixel ID to track and measure user actions related to this specific project on your website.
Step on How to Publish your Spotlight
Click the Publish button
Enable the Tolstoy app in your App Embed inside your Shopify theme editor by clicking Open my theme
Click the Next button once you're done.
📝Note: You can skip these if you already enabled the Tolstoy app in your App embeds
Copy your publish ID, then click Add block
The Carousel block will be automatically added to your theme. Click the block and paste the publish ID.