Specs · YouTube thumbnail size
The numbers YouTube requires, the numbers that make a thumbnail readable in a 168-pixel feed, and the mistakes that make a sharp upload look blurry.
The recommended YouTube thumbnail size is 1280 × 720 pixels, a 16:9 aspect ratio, in JPG, PNG or WEBP, under 2 MB. The minimum width is 640 pixels. Anything else gets stretched, cropped or rejected at upload.
Those are the upload rules. They say nothing about whether the thumbnail works. Most of the time it is displayed far smaller — around 168 pixels wide in the mobile feed — so the real question is not "what size" but "what survives being shrunk eight times".
Four are YouTube requirements, two are what the feed does to your image afterwards.
The recommended resolution. Exporting larger (1920 × 1080) is fine — YouTube downscales — but never smaller than 640 wide.
Any other ratio is letterboxed with black bars or centre-cropped. Square or vertical images lose their edges on desktop.
JPG at 85–90% quality lands around 200–400 KB at 1280 × 720. PNG can exceed 2 MB with photos — switch to JPG or WEBP.
GIF and BMP are accepted but pointless. Transparency in PNG is flattened to black, not white.
The width of a thumbnail in the mobile home feed. Text under about 60 px tall at export becomes unreadable here.
The duration badge covers roughly 15% of the width and 12% of the height. Never put a face or text there.
YouTube recommends 1280 × 720 pixels with a 16:9 aspect ratio, a minimum width of 640 pixels, in JPG, PNG or WEBP format, under 2 MB. Larger 16:9 images such as 1920 × 1080 are accepted and downscaled automatically.
Three usual causes: the source image was smaller than 1280 pixels wide and got upscaled; the JPG was exported at a low quality setting; or the thumbnail is sharp but the text is too small, so at 168 pixels wide it smears into a blur. Re-export at 1280 × 720, quality 85 or higher, with text at least 60 pixels tall.
Shorts take a frame from the video itself or a 9:16 upload (1080 × 1920). The 1280 × 720 rule applies to regular long-form videos only.
No. YouTube re-encodes every thumbnail into its own set of sizes. File size only matters for the 2 MB upload limit. Click-through rate is what affects reach, and that depends on what the image says, not how many kilobytes it weighs.
Every thumbnail is generated at 1280 × 720 pixels, 16:9, as a JPG under 2 MB, ready to upload. The Pixado Score also checks text readability at feed size, so a draft that only works at full resolution is flagged before you export it.
Keep reading: test a thumbnail before publishing · gaming thumbnails · faceless thumbnails
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