Paste a link and you get every image size YouTube actually stores for that video, previewed side by side. Sizes the video never generated are hidden instead of showing you a broken frame.
Signed-in accounts don't have daily limits on Kabo's AI generators, video analyzer, account audits, and engagement lookups.
Watch pages, Shorts, youtu.be links, and bare 11-character video IDs all resolve to the same video.
Each stored resolution is previewed with its exact pixel dimensions, so you can see what you are getting before you save it.
One click saves the original file straight from YouTube's image servers. Nothing is re-encoded, cropped, or watermarked.
YouTube serves several generated image variants from a public image host. This tool checks the known variants for the video you paste and returns only the files that exist; it does not upscale a 1280 × 720 maxresdefault image and call it 4K.
| Name | Dimensions | Usually available for |
|---|---|---|
| Max resolution | 1280 × 720 | When maxresdefault.jpg is available |
| Standard | 640 × 480 | Almost every video |
| High | 480 × 360 | Every video |
| Medium | 320 × 180 | Every video |
| Default | 120 × 90 | Every video |
These are the public image variants this tool checks. Not every video exposes a usable 1280 × 720 maxresdefault file, so the largest option can be absent without the downloader being broken.
A video's public maxresdefault.jpg can be 1280 × 720 even though YouTube's current guidance recommends creating new custom thumbnails at 3840 × 2160. The stored file you can retrieve and the source file YouTube recommends you upload are separate facts.
| Guidance | Value |
|---|---|
| Recommended resolution | 3840 × 2160 pixels |
| Minimum width | 640 pixels |
| Usual aspect ratio | 16:9 |
| Upload limit on mobile | 2 MB for video thumbnails |
| Upload limit on desktop | 50 MB for video thumbnails |
| Listed image formats | JPG, GIF, PNG |
These values describe a new upload, not the resolution of a stored maxresdefault.jpg downloaded from an existing video. YouTube Help: Add custom thumbnails (checked August 18, 2026).
Almost nobody wants the image itself. They want to see a pattern.
Pull the thumbnails from the top twenty videos on a topic and put them side by side. The shared choices — face or no face, how much text, which two colours — show up in seconds and are invisible when you scroll YouTube one video at a time.
Your thumbnail never appears alone. Download the competitors it will sit next to, drop them into a feed mockup, and judge yours in the context where the click actually happens.
YouTube keeps no history of your thumbnails. If you swap one and views move, the old image is gone unless you saved it. Grab it before you replace it.
Saving a public thumbnail to study it is ordinary research, and that is what this tool is for. Republishing it as your own thumbnail is not — the image is the creator's work, and using it on your own video is both a copyright problem and a strike risk. Use them as reference, not as raw material.
This page answers a single question about a single video. Kabo's peer-context and Trend Radar concepts show the direction for broader evidence, but those cards remain product previews rather than live weekly recommendations today.
Any public video works, including Shorts, live replays, and videos with age or region notices on the watch page. Private, unlisted, and deleted videos do not, because their metadata is not served publicly. If a link fails, open it in a normal browser tab first to confirm the video is still up.
For the public variants this downloader checks, the largest available file is maxresdefault.jpg at 1280x720. Some videos do not expose that variant at all. This describes the stored image this tool retrieves, not YouTube's current 3840x2160 recommendation for a new custom-thumbnail upload.
Not every video exposes a usable maxresdefault.jpg. Older uploads and some Shorts can return an empty or fallback image for that variant. This tool checks each size as it loads and hides the ones that are missing, which is why some videos show more download options than others.
Paste the /shorts/ URL exactly as it appears in your address bar. The images YouTube stores are 16:9 even for vertical videos, so a Shorts thumbnail usually arrives cropped or letterboxed. That is how the file is stored on YouTube's side, not something this tool does to it.
Yes, for public streams. While a stream is live, YouTube serves a frame it refreshes periodically, so what you save is a snapshot of that moment. Once the stream ends and the replay stays public, the thumbnail behaves like any other video's — including the custom art if the streamer set one.
Being able to download it is not a licence to republish it. A thumbnail is the creator's work and often contains licensed photography, brand marks, or someone's face. Using it for private study, a swipe file, or a side-by-side comparison is ordinary research. Putting it on your own video, thumbnail pack, or paid product is a copyright and likeness problem unless you have permission. When a design is doing the work, rebuild the idea yourself rather than reusing the file.
YouTube currently recommends 3840x2160 at a 16:9 ratio, with a minimum width of 640 pixels, as JPG, GIF, or PNG. Video-thumbnail limits depend on the upload device: 2 MB on mobile and 50 MB on desktop. The source table above links to the YouTube Help page and records when Kabo checked it.
No account, no email, no watermark. There is a per-day fair-use limit on lookups so the tool stays free and fast for everyone, and it resets the next day.
