Every YouTube thumbnail is stored at a predictable URL on YouTube's image server, i.ytimg.com. Once you know a video's ID, you can build the link to any thumbnail size yourself.

The URL pattern

Thumbnails follow this format:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/SIZE.jpg

Replace VIDEO_ID with the 11-character ID from the video link, and SIZE with one of the names below.

The size filenames

  • maxresdefault.jpg — 1280 × 720 (HD, if available)
  • sddefault.jpg — 640 × 480
  • hqdefault.jpg — 480 × 360 (always available)
  • mqdefault.jpg — 320 × 180
  • default.jpg — 120 × 90

Example: for the video ID dQw4w9WgXcQ, the HD thumbnail is:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg

Where do I find the video ID?

It's the part after v= on a watch page, or after the last slash on a short link:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ → dQw4w9WgXcQ
  • https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ → dQw4w9WgXcQ
  • https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ → dQw4w9WgXcQ

The easy way

You don't have to build URLs by hand. Paste any YouTube link into our thumbnail downloader — it extracts the ID, checks which sizes actually exist, and lets you download each one in a click.