How to preview your video thumbnails directly on YouTube

Let’s say you have a video ready to be published and you are now in the process of putting the final touches on your thumbnail image. It looks great, but is it great? Hard to say without a context behind it, right?

There are two different but not mutually exclusive methods that can be used easily to preview your thumbnails in the best possible way. The first one will be using a completely free tool that is available online as a website and the second one directly on YouTube, rolling up your sleeves.

Using one or even both of these methods combined will give you a higher probability of making sure any viewer, or potential subscriber to your channel, clicks the thumbnail to watch the video you spent countless hours working on (also known as increasing your click-through rate/CTR).

Enter stage left: Thumbs Up

Thumbs Up is an application for you to quickly preview your thumbnails as they would appear on several devices on the YouTube platform. It’s worth mentioning that it’s completely free and available online using any browser.

From small sizes to the largest one possible, default light or dark theme, tinkering with possible titles and descriptions for your videos. With a simple drag and drop of a thumbnail image, it easily enables you to have a full preview of what your viewers can expect on different platforms.