
To do this I clicked on the bottom image and chose to upload my own. I’ve created my own in Photoshop and uploaded it to Youtube. Select the one that looks the best to make it the thumbnail. If you want to keep things really simple you can select one of three random images that YouTube selects for you. You can see on the right side of the video player there are some small still frames. You should now be seeing something similar to this: Once You’ve opened the video, click on the pen icon under the video player. Now you can go to ‘ Videos’ in the middle of the page and you should be able to find your video pretty easily. The easy way to do this is to go to the drop down menu in the top left corner next to the Youtube logo and click ‘ My Channel’. Now navigate to the video that you want to alter. Step-by-step guide to setting a video thumbnail on Youtubeįirst you’ll need to make sure you’re logged into your YouTube account. You can always change a thumbnail if your first choice didn’t work. Often a still frame of your company logo does the job if the video is for a business. Also consider what the video will look like on your website if you’re planning on embedding it. But usually a still frame taken from within the video will work just fine.

If you have the time, you can design a custom thumbnail, and upload it to your video hosting service. Setting a video thumbnail only takes a moment.

So it pays to be able to set your own thumbnail image. Sometimes the random image that it chooses will look good but the luck of the draw says that sometimes this image will be unflattering e.g. This is the image that viewers will see before they play your video. When you upload your video to a hosting service like Youtube or Vimeo, they’ll choose a random image (known as a thumbnail). Uploading your website video to YouTube or Vimeo is a great way to help promote your business.
