photoshrink image tools that never leave your browser
100% client-side · nothing uploaded

YouTube thumbnail size: 1280 × 720 px

The custom thumbnail, at the 16:9 size YouTube asks for and under the file cap it enforces.

Your images never leave your browser

Drop images to resize

or click to browse, or paste with Ctrl/Cmd+V — drop several at once to process a whole batch

YouTube thumbnail size at a glance

Why 1280 × 720, and why the 2 MB cap bites

1280 × 720 is YouTube's recommended thumbnail size and the resolution the player uses for a full-width preview. The absolute minimum accepted width is 640 pixels, but a 640-pixel thumbnail is visibly soft the moment it is shown at any size above a search result row, and it is the same file that has to serve a phone-sized list item and a television home screen.

The constraint people hit is not the dimensions but the 2 MB limit. A 1280 × 720 photograph exported as a maximum-quality PNG runs well past that, and YouTube rejects it outright rather than compressing it for you. The fix is either a JPEG at high quality — which lands comfortably under 500 KB at this size — or a PNG only when the design is flat colour and text, where PNG is both smaller and sharper.

The other thing worth knowing is how small it gets seen. A thumbnail in a mobile search result is a couple of hundred pixels wide. Detail vanishes; contrast and one large focal element survive. Build it at 1280 × 720 so it holds up on a TV, but judge it at 320 pixels wide, which is where most of the decisions to click are actually made.

How to resize an image to 1280 × 720

  1. Drop your image on the panel above — or paste it, or drop several at once to do a batch.
  2. The width and height are already set to 1280 × 720, and the aspect lock is off so both numbers are honoured exactly.
  3. If your source is a different shape, crop it to 16:9 first — resizing a different ratio straight to these numbers stretches it.
  4. Pick an output format. JPEG for photographs, PNG for flat colour, text and anything needing transparency.
  5. Download. Nothing was uploaded at any point — the resize ran on your own machine, in this tab.

Questions

Why was my thumbnail rejected?

Almost always the 2 MB file size limit, or an unsupported format. Re-export as a JPEG — a photographic thumbnail at this size fits well under the cap without visible loss.

Does a bigger thumbnail rank better?

No. Above 1280 × 720 you are only sending YouTube pixels it will throw away. Legibility at small sizes is the thing that changes the click-through rate.

Related sizes