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YouTube thumbnail preview
as viewers will see it.

Add your thumbnail and title. See them in the YouTube home feed, in search results, in the up-next list and on a phone, in light and dark mode, next to other videos. Your images never leave your device.

1 · Your thumbnail
Your thumbnailSample

Drop an image, or paste one from your clipboard (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V). It stays in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

2 · Title and channel
49/100
Channel picture (optional)
Y
3 · Videos around yours

Your competitors go in the feed next to your video. Their thumbnail and title are loaded from YouTube; nothing of yours is sent.

Mode
Zoom

Desktop home on a 1440 px wide screen. Thumbnails are 318 × 179 px here.

Why preview in context

A thumbnail never appears alone.

In your editor, the thumbnail fills the screen. On YouTube it is a small rectangle in a grid of other videos, about 168 pixels wide in the up-next list, beside a title that is cut off after two lines.

Viewers compare it with the thumbnails around it. So the useful question is not “does it look good?” but “does it stand out from what sits next to it?”

This tool puts your thumbnail and title into recreations of the places viewers meet them. Paste the links of videos you compete with, and they appear around yours.

What to look for

Five checks to run on your preview.

01

Contrast with the neighbours

Squint at the feed. If your thumbnail has the same colours and brightness as the videos around it, it is easy to scroll past. Press Shuffle position to try other neighbours, and switch between light and dark mode. A dark thumbnail can disappear on a dark page.

02

Text you can read at small size

Open the Up next view, where thumbnails are smallest. If you cannot read the words there, use fewer of them and make them larger. Short words survive shrinking; long phrases do not.

03

A face that still shows emotion

A clear face gives viewers something to react to. Check that the expression still reads at small size, and on the mobile feed, where the thumbnail is wide but the screen is small.

04

The length badge in the bottom-right corner

YouTube draws the video length over that corner. Keep text, faces and logos out of it. Turn the Length badge switch on and off to see what it hides.

05

Title and thumbnail as one message

The title is cut off after two lines in most views. Put the important words first, and make the title add something the thumbnail does not already say.

A preview shows how it looks, not how it performs.

Two thumbnails can look equally good here and still get different click-through rates (CTR: the share of people who click after seeing your video). This tool does not predict CTR. The only real test is YouTube itself.

Connect your channel to Base.Tube and see your real impressions and CTR for every video, so you know which thumbnails actually worked.

Connect your channel to measure real CTR →Make a new thumbnail
FAQ

Questions about the preview.

How do I preview a YouTube thumbnail before I publish?

Upload your thumbnail, type your title and channel name, then choose a view: desktop home, search results, up next or the mobile feed. The tool places your video among other videos so you can judge it in context. Paste the links of videos you compete with to add them to the feed, and press Shuffle position to see your video next to different neighbours.

Is my thumbnail uploaded anywhere?

No. Your thumbnail, channel picture and text stay in your browser, and nothing is sent to Base.Tube. If you add other videos by link, your browser loads their public thumbnails and titles from YouTube. Those requests contain only the other video, nothing about yours.

What size should a YouTube thumbnail be?

The standard is 1280 × 720 pixels in a 16:9 shape. Keep important content away from the edges and away from the bottom-right corner, where the length badge sits. Our YouTube thumbnail size guide has the current file limits and formats.

Why does the length badge matter?

YouTube draws the video length over the bottom-right corner of the thumbnail. Any text, face or logo placed there is partly hidden. Use the Length badge switch in the tool to see exactly what it covers.

Is this exactly how YouTube looks?

It is a close recreation, not a copy. Proportions, colours and the two-line title cut-off follow the real layouts, but YouTube changes its design often, and the exact look depends on your device, screen size and fonts. Base.Tube is not affiliated with YouTube.

Does a good-looking preview mean more clicks?

No. A preview shows how your thumbnail and title look. It does not measure or predict click-through rate (CTR), which is the share of people who click after seeing your video. Only YouTube data shows that. Connect your channel to Base.Tube to see real impressions and CTR for each video.

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Keep going.

Base.Tube is not affiliated with YouTube. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC. The layouts above are generic recreations and can differ from what you see on YouTube.