The right size for a YouTube thumbnail
YouTube recommends a thumbnail of 1280x720 pixels - a 16:9 widescreen shape - with a minimum width of 640 pixels. Upload something the wrong shape and YouTube crops or pads it, which can cut off your face or title. This tool sizes any photo or graphic to exactly 1280x720 so your thumbnail shows exactly what you intended, on every device.
Crop to fill or fit
- Crop to fill scales your image to cover the whole 16:9 frame and trims the overflow - best when the subject is centred.
- Fit (blurred edges) shows the whole image and fills the sides with a soft blur of itself - useful for a portrait or square image you do not want to crop.
- Fit (colour) places the whole image on a solid colour of your choice.
Thumbnail tips that get clicks
Keep faces and text near the centre and away from the bottom-right corner, where the video duration badge sits. Use large, high-contrast text, since most people see the thumbnail small on a phone. YouTube accepts JPG, PNG and WebP and caps the file at 2 MB; a 1280x720 image from this tool is well under that. Everything runs on your device, so your image is never uploaded.
Private and free
No sign-up, no watermark, nothing stored. Need a different size for another platform? Try the Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or X resizers.