Thumbnail tools
Free tools for the last check before you publish. They run in your browser: no upload, no account, nothing leaves your machine.
Preview before you publish
See the thumbnail where the viewer sees it — next to real competitors, on the surface you choose.
YouTube thumbnail preview
Drop in your thumbnail and title and read them back in a simulated Home feed, search page and suggested column, on desktop and on a phone.
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Choose between candidates
Two or three versions of the same idea, in the same place, under the same title.
Compare YouTube thumbnails
Put two or three thumbnails side by side under the same title, in the same simulated feed, and swap their order to see which one you notice first.
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Prepare the file
Get the image itself right — shape, size, weight — before anything else.
YouTube thumbnail size checker
Check a thumbnail against YouTube's own limits before you upload it: width, height, ratio, weight and format, all measured in your browser.
Open the tool →YouTube thumbnail resizer
Resize any image to 1280 × 720 or 3840 × 2160 without stretching it — fit it inside the frame, or fill the frame and crop the overflow.
Open the tool →YouTube thumbnail compressor
Get a thumbnail under YouTube's 2 MB phone limit, or any size you name, by spending quality before it ever costs you resolution.
Open the tool →YouTube thumbnail cropper
Crop a photo or a screenshot to a clean 16:9 thumbnail: drag to choose the part that matters, zoom in, and save it at 1280 × 720.
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See it the way the viewer does
The same image at rail size, without colour, and under the parts of the interface that cover it.
YouTube thumbnail tester
Test a thumbnail the way it will actually be seen: at rail size, in grayscale, with red-green colour vision, and under the interface that covers it.
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Write the title around it
The words beside the thumbnail: where each surface cuts them off, and how two options compare.
YouTube title length checker
See where each YouTube surface cuts your title off — measured by typesetting it at the real width of each column, not by counting characters.
Open the tool →Compare YouTube titles
Put two or three titles side by side in the same place, against the same thumbnail, and see which survives the cut and which reads first.
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Where your thumbnail actually appears
One image, five surfaces — each one crops it differently, shrinks it differently and covers part of it with something else. Every link opens the preview already in that context.
- Home feed preview (desktop)Large cards in a grid, several to a row, with the avatar and two lines of title underneath.
- Mobile thumbnail previewOne card per row at the full width of the screen, and a title that wraps somewhere else than on desktop.
- Search results previewA wide row: the image on the left, the title, channel and description beside it.
- Mobile search previewThe same results stacked — full-width image, title under it, less room for the words.
- Sidebar preview (suggested)The smallest card there is: a narrow column beside the player, where fine text goes first.