YouTube Thumbnail

1280 x 720 px sRGB 16:9 landscape

A 1280 by 720 px 16:9 thumbnail. The single image that decides whether anyone clicks the video.

about a phone-screen wide landscape

About this size

A thumbnail is a tiny billboard rendered six different ways: a phone-sized search result, a desktop sidebar suggestion, a TV grid, an embed on someone else's blog. The one that has to land first is the smallest one. If the thumbnail does not read at search-result scale, the title is the only thing carrying the click, and titles alone do not carry clicks.

Bold faces, bold type, bold colour, one focal idea. Reserve the bottom-right corner for the duration badge YouTube paints in over every thumbnail. Keep critical content out of that 160 by 40 px zone.

Video thumbnails
Cover art
Presentation graphics

Pro tips

1 Compose one subject, not a collage. A single face, a single object, or a single short headline outperforms three of any of them.
2 Three to five large words. Fewer if possible. The title alongside is doing the descriptive work; the thumbnail does the emotional work.
3 A split layout helps. Subject on one side, headline on the other. The viewer's eye lands once, reads once, decides.
4 Test at 246 by 138 px before publishing. That is the search-result preview size, and that is the size most clicks are decided at.

Common mistakes

Body-text-sized type that disappears at search-result scale. Headlines need to be readable at thumbnail size, not just at full preview.
Critical detail in the bottom-right corner where YouTube paints the duration badge. Faces and headlines get cropped by it.
Exporting a 1920 by 1080 frame and assuming YouTube's downsampling will keep it sharp. It will not. Design at 1280 by 720.

Frequently asked

What size should a YouTube thumbnail be?

1280 by 720 px, 16:9. The minimum width YouTube accepts is 640 px; the maximum file size is 2 MB.

PNG or JPEG?

JPEG for photographic thumbnails. PNG for thumbnails dominated by sharp text or flat colour. JPEG compression turns crisp lettering slightly fuzzy at small scale.

Why does my thumbnail look blurry on YouTube?

Almost always one of two reasons: the upload was below 1280 by 720, or the file exceeded the 2 MB limit and YouTube re-encoded it. Export at exactly 1280 by 720 JPEG quality 90 and stay under 2 MB.