How to resize an image for a YouTube thumbnail
- Drop your picture or screenshot into the box, choose it, or paste it.
- It's resized to 1280 × 720 and saved as a JPG. Crop to fill trims the edges to fit 16:9; Fit inside keeps the whole image with borders.
- Download the thumbnail and upload it in YouTube Studio under the video's details.
Thumbnails that read at small sizes
A thumbnail is designed at 1280 × 720 but is mostly seen much smaller: in search results, beside another video and on phones. Big, simple shapes work best there. Use a few words of large text at most, a clear face or object, and strong contrast between the subject and the background. Look at your thumbnail at the size of a thumbnail on your phone before you upload it.
Leave the bottom right corner free of anything important, since YouTube shows the video length there. To put a title on your picture, use add text to image after resizing.
Making a thumbnail from a video frame
Pause your video on a good frame and take a screenshot of it. A full-screen screenshot of a 16:9 video is already the right shape, so it resizes to 1280 × 720 without losing anything. For a sharper result, take the screenshot with the video playing at 1080p or higher and in full screen.