Paste any YouTube link — regular videos, Shorts, live streams — and instantly grab every available thumbnail resolution: MaxRes 1080p, HD 720p, SD, and HQ. Download in one click or copy the direct CDN link.
Paste a YouTube link to see thumbnails
We'll detect every available resolution — MaxRes 1080p, HD 720p, SD, and HQ — and let you download them instantly.
Any YouTube URL, every resolution, one click.
Copy any YouTube URL — regular watch page, Shorts, live stream, youtu.be short link, or embed URL. You can also paste just the 11-character video ID.
Click Extract. We probe YouTube's CDN and load every available resolution — MaxRes 1080p, HD 720p, SD, and HQ — as live previews.
Click Download on any resolution to save it as a JPG, or copy the direct i.ytimg.com link to use in your content. Use Download All to grab every resolution at once.
Everything you need to know
YouTube stores up to five thumbnail sizes per video, all served from the public i.ytimg.com CDN. maxresdefault.jpg is the highest-quality version at 1280×720. sddefault.jpg is 640×480, hqdefault.jpg is 480×360, mqdefault.jpg is 320×180, and default.jpg is 120×90. This tool extracts all of them in one pass so you can pick the right one for any use case.
Content creators use thumbnails for competitor analysis and design inspiration. Bloggers embed them as featured images for video posts. Social media managers reuse them for cross-platform promotion. Researchers and journalists grab them for articles and archive work. Developers use them as fallbacks in video embeds and RSS feeds. Whatever the reason, one paste gets you the highest-quality available version.
YouTube's CDN serves thumbnails from a predictable URL pattern: i.ytimg.com/vi/{VIDEO_ID}/{resolution}.jpg. Since the video ID is a stable identifier extracted from any URL format, the tool simply parses the ID, constructs the candidate URLs, and probes each one with an Image element. If the image loads with real dimensions, the resolution exists. No API key, no scraping, no server round-trips — everything happens instantly.
YouTube thumbnails are copyrighted by their creators unless otherwise stated. Downloading for personal reference, commentary, criticism, or educational purposes typically falls under fair use. Re-uploading someone else's thumbnail as your own — for a competing video, blog post, or commercial product — may infringe copyright. Always credit the original creator, and when in doubt, reach out for permission.
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