YouTube Thumbnail Downloader

Every YouTube video serves its thumbnail as an ordinary public image, in five sizes, to anyone who loads the page. This finds them and lets you save the one you want.

Paste any form of YouTube address — the normal watch link, a youtu.be short link, a Shorts link, an embed, or just the eleven-character video id — and each size is checked and shown with its real dimensions and file size. Not every video has every size: the maximum-resolution version only exists for videos uploaded in HD, so it is checked rather than offered blindly and left to fail.

Two of the sizes are 4:3 for historical reasons, which means a modern widescreen thumbnail comes with black bars top and bottom. That is how YouTube stores them, not something this tool does, and it is noted against each size so you can pick one that is genuinely widescreen.

The images are fetched by your browser directly from YouTube's image servers. Nothing passes through this site, so no record of what you looked up exists anywhere.

One thing worth saying plainly: a thumbnail belongs to whoever made the video. Looking at one, or using it as a reference for your own design, is fine. Republishing it, or using it as your own thumbnail, needs their permission — and nothing here touches the video itself or circumvents any protection.