YouTube thumbnail size
The duration badge sits bottom right, keep it clear. 50 MB is the desktop limit; uploading from the mobile app the cap is 2 MB.
Cropped in your browser · your image is never uploaded
YouTube recommends 3840 × 2160 at 16:9, as JPG or PNG, with 640 pixels the minimum width it will accept. The file cap depends on where you upload from: 50 MB on desktop, 2 MB in the mobile app. The long-quoted 1280 × 720 is comfortably above the minimum and well below what YouTube now asks for.
How to use the youtube thumbnail size
Which limit bites depends on where you upload from — 50 MB on desktop, 2 MB in the mobile app — and what keeps you under either is the export format rather than the dimensions. A photographic frame saved as a 24-bit PNG runs to several megabytes at 3840 × 2160, which clears the desktop cap easily and clears the mobile one not at all; the same frame as a JPEG at around quality 85 lands far below either with nothing visibly lost at the sizes a thumbnail is seen. PNG is only the smaller file when the design is flat graphic work with large areas of one colour, which most thumbnails are not. WEBP would be smaller than either, and is not one of the two formats YouTube lists.
Two pieces of YouTube’s own interface land on the frame and neither of them moves. The duration badge sits over the bottom-right corner in every listing, and on the home feed and the watch page a red watched-progress bar runs along the bottom edge of anything already started. Treat the bottom strip and that corner as unusable rather than as somewhere to finish a word or place a face.
One consequence that is easy to miss: the thumbnail is also the og:image YouTube publishes for the video, so it is the picture that appears when the link is pasted into Slack, WhatsApp or a post. 16:9 is close enough to the 1.91:1 a link card wants that little is lost, which is one image fewer to make.
What people use it for
- Getting a rejected thumbnail under the upload limit
- Choosing between JPEG and PNG for a thumbnail export
- Keeping a face clear of the duration badge in the corner
- Cropping a still from the video to a clean 16:9
- Checking that the picture also works as the link card for the video
Questions
3840 × 2160 at 16:9 is what YouTube recommends, and 640 pixels is the minimum width it accepts. 1280 × 720 still uploads and still looks fine at the sizes a thumbnail is actually seen at; it is simply no longer the recommendation.
The file size, almost always, and which limit applies depends on where you upload from: 2 MB from the mobile app against 50 MB on desktop. Export JPEG at around quality 85 instead of PNG and a photographic frame lands near 250 KB either way.
JPEG for anything photographic. PNG is only smaller when the design is flat colour and hard edges. Those two are the formats YouTube lists — WEBP would be smaller than both, and is not among them.
The duration badge over the bottom-right corner in every listing, and a red watched-progress bar along the bottom edge once someone has started the video.
Slightly, and 3840 × 2160 is better again — that is what YouTube now recommends. A thumbnail is served downscaled to whatever the surface needs, so the gain is in what survives the downscale rather than in anything you see at full size.
Yes, as the video’s og:image. Paste the link into Slack or WhatsApp and the thumbnail is the link card.