YouTube Thumbnail Safe Zone Checker

It's the part of your thumbnail that YouTube's own interface never covers. The duration badge sits in the bottom-right corner, and a red progress bar runs along the bottom edge on videos a viewer has already started. Keep anything important — faces, big text — away from those areas so nothing gets hidden.

It marks the timestamp zone. YouTube stamps a black duration badge — the "10:24" label — in the bottom-right corner of every thumbnail. The red box outlines that corner, a little larger than the badge itself, so you can see exactly what gets covered. Keep faces, text, and logos out of it. Hide it any time with the "Timestamp zone" button.

The rule of thirds splits the frame into a 3×3 grid. Placing your main subject — a face or the focal point — along those lines, or where they cross, usually looks more balanced and eye-catching than dead center. Turn on the "Rule of thirds" overlay to check your composition against the grid.

1280×720 pixels — a 16:9 ratio. That's YouTube's recommended size and what every surface in this tool previews. Staying at 1280×720 keeps your thumbnail sharp and gives you full control over the composition.

If your image isn't 16:9, YouTube center-crops it to fit — and so does this preview. When you see the crop warning, re-export your thumbnail at 1280×720 so nothing important gets cut off.

The same thumbnail renders at very different sizes — a roomy card on the desktop home feed, a tiny strip in the suggested-videos sidebar, and a near-full-width card in the mobile app. Text that's perfectly readable on desktop often turns into a blur at sidebar size, so switch tabs to make sure it works everywhere.

No. Your image never leaves your device — the whole preview runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or sent to a server.