How to Add Custom Thumbnails to Your YouTube Videos

Video thumbnails let viewers see a quick snapshot of your video as they're browsing YouTube. After your video is finished uploading, you can choose a thumbnail from the three options YouTube automatically generates, or upload your own.

[twna]

A lot of us in the youtube help community are having trouble accessing custom thumbnail despite being verified, please help.

[mirunautlus]

he is the calmest person i have seen in this channel others just shout the flip out of me

[DuoEdgeStudiosSketchware]

Before, i didn't know how to add custom thumbnails but once signed in to yt studio, the custom thumbnail feature has really helped me attract alot of views by making it awesome and interactive.
More so when i build useful content

[silentskies]

I have a little problem. I already verified my account, but Youtube Studio still won't let me build add a custom thumbnail to my video.

[AridersLifeYT]

Question. I see my video has a moving thumbnail. what is the time points it creates these.
EG, a 1min video, is the moving thumbnail from exactly 50% of the way through the 1min video?

[Young.and.Beautiful]

Seems YT processes thumbnails for vertical videos (not shorts) slightly differently. Even if I upload custom thumbnails for my vertical videos, YT is showing random frames (for most videos second auto generated frame) in YT search or recommendation list on home page. Is there a way I can control what that random frame will be, as video's viewership seems to be heavily dependent on that frame.

[JimWellman]

How can we adjust the video preview that shows when the cursor is placed over the thumbnail? Is there a way to choose a section of my video to designate as the preview?

[VitalityMassage]

My custom thumbnails do not always appear IN THE SEARCH RESULTS. Often times, the center randomly chosen thumbnail is the one that shows up. For example, if you look up "leg massage tools" in a search, my cool custom thumbnail does NOT appear! This is REALLY annoying and it means that my hard work is all for not. I won't get the clicks! If you search for "leg massage tool vs foam roller" then the same video DOES come up with the correct custom thumbnail. What's up with that? I really want to know what the problem is. Are we being duped or what?
So I've taken screenshots of this problem and contacted creator support at least twice. Two days ago, even though I presented rock solid evidence of the problem, the chat box support person flat out denied it! He told me that Youtube would contact me via email but I've not heard back a thing so far.

[nullus]

Good to see that I'm not alone with my thumbnail issue, and that it seems to be a recent thing. Good luck on getting it fixed!

[TheDragShot]

Hello, I've been having issues with the thumbnail tool. It seems to have stopped working out of the blue since two weeks ago. Whenever I try to use the button in desktop nothing happens, no open dialog, no menu, nothing. All I get is a response in the console saying "Feature Eligibility Blocked - Reason: Already Unlocked", which sounds all kinds of weird. Clearing cache, incognito browsing and different browsers didn't help at all.

In the meantime, I'm using my phone to upload thumbnails, but I hate how much the quality decreases when I do so; so I'd appreciate if you guys could check and take care of that problem in the browser version of YT Studio, as well as giving the option of disabling image compression of thumbnails on the phone. I already take care of properly compressing the image in my PC.

[RelaxingPianoMusic]

It is a fact that beautiful, curious thumbnails are easy to catch the viewer's eye

[yorklie]

Hi! So I've seen a lot of comments saying that the custome thumbnails are not working despite us being verified, I am also going through this. Let us know when you are able to fix it!

[harshavardhanreddy]

Translation of voices into different languages is helpful to all the people throughout the world

[HomeEconomicswithAmna]

Really helpful and to the point thanks for sharing 👍

[juliamartin]

Thank you for your video. I have a question that I can't find a video about. On my youtube channel, the auto play on the videos I upload has stopped working. When you hover with your mouse it doesn't autoplay. Any tips to fix this problem?

[coffee]

I am having the same issue as many others. I have been verified for over 24hours now, and still cannot choose custom thumbnails on the default uploader. On the classic uploader, however, i CAN choose custom thumbnails. I can also choose custom thumbnails on my iPhone from the YT studio app, so wondering if it is a glitch with the new uploader.

[CrashChemistryAcademy]

I added my own thumbnail, but now want to change it. However the "upload thumbnail" no longer exists since I already used it, and there seems to be no way to replace it. Please advise. Thanks much.

[NoudleSound]

So helpful! I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to upload mine, thank you :D

[hyperboy]

Hi, you say we can upload GIFs, but when I attempt to do so, I get a message saying 'not an image'. Why? HELP! @TeamYouTube

It's a verified account, and the GIF is less than 2MB.

[UncleJoeHikes]

I try to always use PNG and not JPG but sometimes the quality of the thumbnail get's drastically reduced. When it shows up on YouTube it's sometimes faded and grainy.