Your privacy is protected! The link you paste never reaches our servers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Paste the video link into the box and press Get Thumbnails. Every size YouTube stores for that video appears at once, and the Download button saves the file straight to your device. You can also paste the bare video ID if that is all you have.
All of the common ones: youtube.com/watch?v=…, youtu.be/…, youtube.com/shorts/…, youtube.com/embed/…, youtube.com/live/… and links carrying extra parameters such as a timestamp or playlist. The tool pulls the 11-character video ID out of whatever you paste.
YouTube does not create the 1280×720 maxresdefault image for every video. Older and low-resolution uploads usually lack it, and so do some genuinely HD ones. YouTube answers a missing size with a real HTTP 404 while still attaching a 1,097-byte grey placeholder image, so a tool that only checks whether the image loaded will hand you a blank grey box and call it HD. This tool reads the status code and marks the size unavailable instead.
Five: maxresdefault at 1280×720, sddefault at 640×480, hqdefault at 480×360, mqdefault at 320×180 and default at 120×90. Only maxresdefault and mqdefault are true 16:9. The other three are 4:3 frames, so a widescreen thumbnail sits inside them with black bars above and below it.
Because three of the five sizes are 4:3 frames left over from YouTube's pre-2008 layout, and a 16:9 thumbnail letterboxes into them — exactly a quarter of those files is padding. Pick maxresdefault or mqdefault for a clean widescreen image. If maxresdefault is missing, sddefault holds the most picture at 640 × 360 once you crop 60 pixels off the top and bottom. We measured all five sizes across six videos in Why Your Downloaded YouTube Thumbnail Has Black Bars.
The thumbnail belongs to whoever uploaded the video, and downloading it does not transfer any rights. Using one for reference, a private mock-up, or commentary and criticism is usually fine. Republishing it as your own, or using it commercially, needs the creator's permission.
No. Your browser reads the thumbnail directly from YouTube's image servers, and the download is assembled locally. The link you paste never reaches CodBolt, and nothing about the video is logged.