YouTube Shorts: How to Add ANY Custom Thumbnail

A recent YouTube Shorts update gave creators 'some' of what they wanted, this hack gives creators everything they wanted!

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⏱️⏱️VIDEO CHAPTERS⏱️⏱️
0:00 - The problem with Shorts thumbnails
1:06 - How to upload fully custom thumbnails to YouTube Shorts
2:43 - Why is YouTube making this so hard?

[jamesdeen]

There is another method for adding thumbnails to Youtube shorts that I found by accident:
I wondered why Youtube defined some of my short films as normal videos.
I compared them with my other shorts and found out that if the playing time is up to 59 sec, Youtube declares them as shorts.
If they are at least 1 minute long, they are classified as normal videos and you can add thumbnails. In this case, you can upload the video via PC and edit it like a normal video.
I tested it by varying the playing time of the same video.
If you shorten the extended video later with the Youtube editor, it will be listed as short again. The thumbnail remains but can not be changed afterwards.

[HousingEstatesbangalore]

Update You Can No Longer Use the Editor to Trim and Cut Shorts.

[kaylenebarber]

This is hilarious because back in the early days of YouTube, people would upload a still frame—that they wanted to be their thumbnail—precisely at certain points in their videos so that they could select that as the thumbnail. They couldn’t scrub over the whole video for this; I believe it only let you pick between the first frame, the center frame, and the end frame.

[millerism]

This still works, I just did it. Everyone is right that the pencil is gone. I added the thumb to the beginning and the app automatically made it the thumb. You just have to get the short uploaded to YT, mark it private then go into the editor in YT studio (on desktop/laptop) and do all the same things

[VancaGaming]

How did you get that option on 0:13? I checked with my phone and it didnt show

[PapitronPrime]

It appears for methat when uploading a video on mobile, its quality is restricted to 720p, resulting in an unsatisfactory appearance. While I'd like to have a better thumbnail, I'm unwilling to compromise the quality by downgrading from 1440p at 60fps to 720p at 30fps. Does anyone know of a solution for this issue, or will I need to wait until the option becomes available on PC?

[DarinPirkey]

and a little hack is to add two image of different thumbnails you are considering and put one on beginning and one on end and then you can choose between the two and see how they perform.

[chilltemper]

i also feel like part of why true custom shorts thumbnails are never coming is because of clickbait
when viewers are dropping like flies at the beginning of long form piece it’s a good indicator that there’s something wrong with the video
but short form is quicker to get through and by the time you realize you aren’t getting what you clicked on you might have even finished the video

[vBurniiOnYoutube]

Anybody that is Reading this Right now don’t let anything stop you from accomplishing your goals and dreams Keep doing you and forget what the haters have to say!Stay Dedicated and Keep doing you! Don’t ever Give up Keep pushing your self towards success and Greatness and Keep Growing Keep a Good mindset and keep doing good things!

[Alkiel]

it seems just the act of transferring and uploading from your phone helps in a big way. At least youre able to select which frame in the video is best to be used as the thumbnail

[AttractionSpot]

I wonder if it's to prevent people from creating fake thumbnails for clicks and views since your earning Revenue based off of views instead of watch time at this point I know they have problems with people creating clickbait thumbnails for long form videos. Technically you can actually lose the feature for custom thumbnails if you are heavily violating this.

[chantalgFAC]

Hi! I can't actually edit my shorts after publishing, I have this message saying I can't edit a short. You said it was due to a use of a feature, which I don't do. Is it still possible to edit a short after publishing (november 2023)?

[PLANTONE]

Today I created a shorts video .mp4 on PC and transferred it to DCIM/CAMERA on the it's not showing under photos to play back or upload to YouTube Shorts?

Why not?
I have checked it's on phone via looking again via connection to PC.

How do I get to view it on phone under photos?

[keitaro]

adding 1 frame or some second to shorts for thumbnail choice is so obvious. but then suddenly you ask for YouTube editor to delete that, BOOM, MINDBLOWN 😂😂😂 i never think of that lol

but yeaaa, sad that i always use sound from other, so this feature won't work. but i think using image from 1 frame in the video is good enough. or maybe you can put custom thumbnail at the end, since at the end, it wont be too annoying

[Fuckyourfeelins.]

Yall don't give up. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break. Come back to it. Im the last person that has a right to consider my own channel on YouTube, but here I am.

[Hashmojis]

Hello awesome people on the YT Journey! Just wanted to say, you can use tools online to do this almost automatically, said tools were originally designed for thumbnails on Discord videos, but it will work with this aswell! Goodluck on the journey and stay strong, we'll make it some day. Also, hello Rob! <3

[DaddyDragon]

You used to be able to do this on the desktop version, some time ago. I started doing shorts last year and the ones I uploaded from my PC I got to create and choose the thumbnails. YouTube removed this feature on purpose. No idea why or when they will put it back :(

[DefenDefault]

This is what I was thinking too. I did this in an old video of mine long time ago when I still can't put custom thumbnail in my long-form videos.

[AndrewsVideoTips]

I used to do this trick before I "verified" my channel where I would basically show a picture of the thumbnail for the first few seconds, Because I realized that YouTube's automatic thumbnails choose from different parts of the video. The first one is the first couple of seconds.

[midnightmathtutor]

I wish we could do custom thumbnails for shorts even if you couldn't add them until your video has already been published for a week or something. It's just so hard if you want to watch shorts from someone's page to know what you're clicking on. Thumbnails would help this greatly.