YouTube thumbnail size: 1280 × 720, and what actually gets cropped

The numbers

YouTube asks for a thumbnail that is 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall — a 16:9 rectangle, the same shape as the video player. The minimum accepted width is 640 pixels, the file has to come in under 2 MB, and JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP are all accepted.

Use 1280 × 720 rather than the minimum. It is the size the player uses on a large screen, and uploading something smaller means YouTube upscales it for anyone watching on a television, which looks soft in exactly the context where your video is filling the whole screen.

If you have an image at some other size, the YouTube thumbnail resizer crops it from the centre to fill 1280 × 720 rather than squashing it. That distinction matters more than it sounds: a cropped face still looks like a face, and a squashed one does not.

Where your thumbnail is actually seen

Almost nowhere at 1280 pixels. That is the file you upload; it is not the picture anyone makes a decision about. The same image is rendered at wildly different sizes depending on where it appears:

At 120 pixels wide, a 1280-pixel image has been reduced to about 9% of its linear size. Text set at 40 pixels in your design is under 4 pixels tall by the time it reaches that slot. It is not small; it is gone.

Design for the smallest size, not the largest

The practical consequence is a rule that sounds crude and holds up well: your thumbnail should still communicate at 120 pixels wide.

• Three or four words, maximum. If it needs a sentence, it belongs in the title, which has 100 characters and is rendered as actual text.
• Enormous type. As a rough floor, text should be about a tenth of the image height — 70 pixels or so on a 720-pixel-tall canvas. That feels absurd in the editor and correct in the feed.
• One subject. Two faces at 120 pixels are two blobs.
• Contrast over detail. Downscaling destroys fine texture and preserves large areas of colour. A bright subject against a dark background survives; a subtle gradient does not.

Test it honestly: export your thumbnail, shrink it to 120 pixels wide, and look at it from across the room. That is the real viewing condition.

What covers part of your image

Two things sit on top of the thumbnail in most placements, and both are in the bottom-right corner:

• The duration badge — a small dark pill showing the video length. It occupies the bottom-right corner in essentially every grid and search placement.
• The progress bar — a red line along the bottom edge for anyone who has already started watching.

So keep the bottom-right corner clear of anything that matters, and keep the last few pixels along the bottom edge clear too. Some placements also round the corners, which nibbles a little off each one. The thumbnail safe area tool overlays these zones on your own image so you can see what is covered rather than guessing.

The parts that are not about size

Two more constraints are worth knowing because they are easy to trip over:

• Custom thumbnails need a verified account. Without verification YouTube picks a frame from the video for you.
• The file has to be under 2 MB. A 1280 × 720 JPEG at sensible quality is usually 150–400 KB, so this only bites if you export a PNG of a photograph. If yours is over, compress it — and read what the quality slider actually does before you drag it to 50.

Shorts are a different shape

A Short is vertical: 1080 × 1920, 9:16. A 16:9 thumbnail placed on a Short gets centre-cropped into a tall frame, which throws away the left and right thirds of your design — usually including the text. If you publish both, make two images. The Shorts cover resizer handles the vertical crop.

The short version

Upload 1280 × 720. Design as though it will be seen at 120 pixels, because much of the time it will be. Keep the bottom-right corner clear. Three words, one subject, hard contrast. Everything else is decoration on an image nobody can see.