YouTube Thumbnail Preview — Free Tool
See your thumbnail at the sizes viewers actually meet it: the 360px search result, the 168px sidebar and the mobile feed. Nothing you add ever leaves the browser.
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Your image is read by the browser and drawn on this page. There is no network request and no export step, and the local reference is released when you replace the image or leave.
Your channel
Your channel
Your channel
Each surface is drawn at its real pixel size rather than scaled to fill the page. That is the point: a thumbnail that works at 360 pixels can be unreadable at 168.
Features
- Three surfaces at their real pixel widths: a 360px desktop search result, a 168px sidebar suggestion and the 360px mobile feed card
- Title, channel, view count and age are drawn with the same line clamps YouTube applies, so a title that gets cut off is visible here first
- Warns when the image is not 16:9 or is narrower than 1280 pixels, which is the size YouTube asks for
- No upload and no export: the file is read by the page, drawn locally, and released as soon as you replace it or leave
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as the thumbnail downloader?
No, they are opposites. The YouTube thumbnail downloader takes the URL of a video that is already published and fetches the thumbnail image somebody else uploaded. This tool never touches YouTube at all: it takes a thumbnail you have not published yet and shows you what it will look like once it is. Use the downloader for competitive research, and this one before you hit publish.
Why is the sidebar preview so small?
Because that is its real size. A suggestion in the desktop sidebar is 168 pixels wide, which is about a seventh of the 1280 pixel canvas most thumbnails are designed on. Text that reads comfortably in your editor routinely disappears there. The surfaces here are laid out at their true pixel widths rather than scaled to fill the page, because scaling them up would hide exactly the problem the tool exists to show.
What size should I export my thumbnail at?
1280 by 720 pixels, a 16:9 ratio, and under 2 MB. Every surface crops to 16:9, so a square or vertical image is either letterboxed or cut. The tool warns you when the file you loaded is off-ratio or narrower than 1280 so you can fix it in your editor rather than after upload.
Does my image get uploaded?
No. The file is read by your browser, turned into a local object URL and drawn on the page. There is no network request, no server-side processing and no export step, and the local reference is released when you replace the image or leave the page.
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