Build a sidecar in your story

There are many ways to embed multimedia content in ArcGIS StoryMaps. One of the most useful for creating smooth transitions between maps, images, and other media is the sidecar block. Using a series of slides, you can integrate media with text to create a simple scrolling experience. Sidecars allow others to access your mapped data one step at a time.

To help readers correctly interpret your map, you can create a series of map views that take the reader from a big picture view of the data to specific patterns. Sidecars use a scrolling technique to allow you to alternate between layers of data or large-scale views of specific locations on the map.

The story Urban Africa uses a sidecar to show growth of cities. As you scroll through, you'll see layers fade from one to the next, allowing you to compare the size of urban populations with the rate of urban population change. In a few instances, the map zooms in to noteworthy data points. To learn more about the value of this technique, start with this explanatory blog post. Otherwise, use the steps below to create a gradual walk-through of your visualized data.

This tutorial was last tested on November 12, 2025.

View final result

Requirements

• ArcGIS account (see options for software access)

Build a sidecar in your story

Sign in and create your story

First, you'll sign in to ArcGIS Online and create a story.

1. Go to ArcGIS Online and sign in to your organizational or public account.

   Note:

   If you don't have an organizational account, see options for software access.

2. On the ribbon, click the App Launcher and choose StoryMaps.

   

   The ArcGIS StoryMaps page opens in a new tab.

   Note:

   You can also access the story builder from the ArcGIS StoryMaps home page. If you've created any other stories with the story builder, you can see them here. Filters can help you find content by where its stored, its content type, status, or how its shared.

3. On the ArcGIS StoryMaps page, click Create and choose Story.

   

   A story opens in the builder. You'll give your story a name so you can identify it after you close the builder

   

4. Click Story title and type Using a Sidecar.

   

   Your story is saved as a draft, with its title.

Create your sidecar and configure your slides

Now that you have your story set up, you can add content blocks. A sidecar is an immersive block with a side-by-side reading experience composed of narrative panel on one side and a media panel on the other. Together, these two panels constitute a slide. The sidecar block can be used to share many types of media. In this case, it's a good tool for guiding a reader through your maps and data in a series of slides. Your sidecar will cover a small part of the Urban Africa story referenced above. You'll add a sidecar and configure a set of slides that show the patterns of urban growth in Africa.

Note:

In this tutorial, you'll focus on the sidecar block. For a more thorough introduction to ArcGIS StoryMaps, try the Get to Know ArcGIS StoryMaps tutorial series.

1. Under the title, click Add content block..

   

   A list of content block types appears.

2. Scroll the bottom of the list and under Immersive, click Sidecar.

   

3. In the Select a sdiecar layout window, click Save.

   A sidecar with one slide is added to the story.

4. On the media panel of your first sidecar slide, click the Add button and choose Map.

   

   The Add a map window opens. By switching filters, you can choose content from your account, your favorites, your organization, the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, and across ArcGIS Online. You want to use a map that's publicly available on ArcGIS Online.

5. Under Filters, for View items in, choose Public Content. In the search box type Urbanization in Africa owner:storymaps.

   

   One map is found.

6. Click the Urbanization in Africa map.

   The map opens in the Adjust map appearance view. When adding maps to a story, you can choose the zoom extent and view and set layer visibility before placing the map. These changes are saved in the story without affecting the original map. The map you configure here appears on the first slide in your sidecar. This slide will give your readers an overview of urban density in Africa.

   Tip:

   You can customize the names of your map's layers by clicking the layer name and typing. These changes only appear in the story map you're currently building and make your legend understandable to the average reader, but they do not affect the map anywhere else. To display the legend, you can turn on the toggle button in the Options tab.

7. In the side pane, make sure the Layers tab is visible.
8. For the Urban Density layer, ensure the layer is visible.

   

9. Zoom and pan until the continent of Africa is the focal point of the map and click Save.

   

   The map is placed in the media pane. You can go back to editing the map at any time by clicking the edit button on the toolbar. Now, it's time to add the next slide in your sidecar. Because you want to show another aspect of the same map, you'll duplicate the slide.

   On the bottom of the sidecar block is the slide panel where you can manage the order of slides or duplicate an existing slide.

   

   Note:

   At this point you can also start adding content to the narrative panel of your sidecar slide. Duplicating a slide duplicates content in both the narrative and media panels. Since you will use the same web map over a series of slides, it's a bit faster to first configure the media panels by duplicating them and adjusting the maps and adding the related narrative content after your sequence is set.

10. On the slide panel, for the current slide thumbnail, click Slide options and choose Duplicate slide.

    

    A second slide is added and the editor automatically shifts to that slide for you to continue editing.

    Tip:

    You can use the same web map and adjust its configuration (instead of adding an entirely separate web map) to give your readers a smoother experience. As they scroll through slides with the same web map, layers fade in or out, and the map pans and zooms to the next extent. START HERE

11. On the media panel, click the Edit button to open the map designer for the duplicated slide.

    

12. In the Layers tab, turn off the Urban Density layer and turn on Population, 2015 (Cities 100k and up).
13. Click Save.

    The updated map is added to the second slide. Each circle represents a city with a population greater than 100,000. The larger the circle, the larger the population size. While there are many large cities on the continent, Cairo stands out as the largest. On the next slide, you'll draw your readers' attention to Egypt.

    

14. Duplicate the second slide and open the map designer for the newly added third slide.

    Tip:

    You can also duplicate a slide when the slide pane is collapsed. Click Duplicate slide. You are automatically placed on the newly copied slide to continue editing.

15. In the map designer, zoom and pan so that Cairo, Egypt is centered in the map frame.

    Zooming closer to a specific area redraws the proportional symbols. Now that the circles are spaced better, it's easier to interpret patterns.

16. Click Save.

    Population size is only half the story, though. Next, you'll add a slide that compares population size with the rate of population change.

    

17. On the slide panel, duplicate the second slide. Then, click and drag the duplicated slide to the end of the slide panel, making it the fourth slide.

    

    Tip:

    When you duplicate any slide, the new slide is positioned to the right of whichever slide is currently selected. You can change a slide's position by dragging its thumbnail or choosing Move right or Move left from Slide options.

18. For the fourth slide, click the edit button to open the map designer, and in the side panel, turn off the layer Population, 2015 (100k and up) and turn on the layer Percent Change in Population, 2000-2015 (Cities 100k and up). Click Save.

    While the largest cities appear to be in Egypt and along the west coast of the continent, cities along the east coast seem to be experiencing the largest percentage of growth. In particular, cities around Lake Victoria and farther north in Ethiopia have grown by over 4,000 percent since 2000.

    

19. Duplicate the percent change slide (the fourth slide) and open the map designer.
20. In the side panel, click the Bookmarks tab and choose Great Lakes.

    

    The map zooms in to the cluster of data points around Lake Victoria.

21. Click Save.

Build out your narrative panel

You've successfully configured a series of web map views in a sidecar block. The scrolling transitions of this block guide your readers through the mapped data with a smooth experience. Scroll back and forth through your sidecar to see this in action.

To finish the sidecar block to look like the one in Urban Africa, you'd need to add some explanatory material in the narrative panel. To learn more about how to add different kinds of content blocks to the narrative panel, see the Add sidecars documentation topic for details.

To learn more about configuring a story, see the Get to Know ArcGIS StoryMaps tutorial series to discover the ins and outs of the ArcGIS StoryMaps builder. For questions and tips, you can also visit Esri Community.

You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.

Acknowledgements

• The Population, 2015 (Cities 100k and up) and Percent Change, 2000-2015 (100k and up) feature layers come from Africapolis.org under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
• The Urban density tile layer comes from NASA SEDAC under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
• The banner image by Ninara is via Flickr.