Step 3: After a drop-down menu shows up, choose the “Settings” option.

Step 2: Click on your profile icon in the upper right corner. We’ll assume that you already registered a YouTube account, and move straight onto how to turn the option on. Here’s how to make it possible to upload custom thumbnails on your YouTube channel. So your video’s thumbnail deserves more attention and effort. And if you have it in a different format, don’t worry, there’s plenty of free online resizing and design tools available for this job.Īuto-generated thumbnails are often bland, unauthentic, and sometimes even blurry. If your image is in any other format than these four file types, you won’t be able to upload it. YouTube supports four image file formats: PNG, JPG, BMP, and GIF. Also, when you post a video on social media, that’s the aspect ratio it’s shown in on the feed. This ratio allows all apps, web players, and devices (computers, smartphones, tablets) to display the video optimally. Aspect ratioĪs we already mentioned, the aspect ratio ideally should be 16:9 (16 units wide and 9 units tall).

The reason for that is because this way images will load faster, whether on a desktop or mobile device. When it comes to image size, YouTube allows uploading a maximum file size of 2MB per image. However, if you decide to resize from a bigger size to 1280 px width in order to make sure the image loads faster, make sure you keep the same aspect ratio. Don’t resize it from a smaller size to 1280, cause that will destroy your quality and pixelate the image. If your thumbnail has less than 1280 pixels in width, make sure it’s not less than the recommended minimum width of 640. The best dimensions for a YouTube thumbnail image that will ensure optimal performance on any device or ratio is 1280 x 720 px.

Download a youtube thumbnail