How to download thumbnail of any YouTube video without any tool

YouTube lets creators upload a custom thumbnail of the video if they want. Otherwise, it asks them to select from a few autogenerated options. These thumbnails are created in different sizes and are shown in different places where the video appears. If you are interested in downloading the thumbnail of any YouTube video, you don’t need any software or online tool. You can simply download thumbnails using the video URL. In this article, I will tell you how to get the thumbnail of a YouTube video in high quality without using any software or tool.

Download High Quality Thumbnail of a Youtube video

You only need the video URL for thumbnails. So, open YouTube and get the video URL from the address bar.

Let’s take an example of this URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY–f4hBrps

This is how video appears.

You need to take the video id from URL. Video id will be the value of v in video URL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= kY–f4hBrps

So video id will be kY–f4hBrps

If you are taking the URL from the share menu, it will be something like this: https://youtu.be/kY–f4hBrps

Here video id is the last part of the URL: https://youtu.be/kY–f4hBrps

Now when you have the video id, you are ready to make thumbnail URLs of the video.

http://img.youtube.com/vi/youtube-video-id/maxresdefault.jpg

Replace videoid woth actual videoid and you get a URL like this:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/kY–f4hBrps/maxresdefault.jpg

Open this URL and you will get the thumbnail photo. Here is the image I downloaded.

YouTube video thumbnails in all available sizes

Low resolution:
http://img.youtube.com/vi/youtube-video-id/default.jpg

Thumbnail in medium-high resolution:
http://img.youtube.com/vi/youtube-video-id/sddefault.jpg

Medium resolution low:
http://img.youtube.com/vi/youtube-video-id/mqdefault.jpg

Medium resolution high:
http://img.youtube.com/vi/youtube-video-id/hqdefault.jpg

You should always remember that the video is creator’s copyrighted material and it also applies to the thumbnail. If you want to use thumbnail in any of your content, you should always take the permission from the video creator. Otherwise you may face legal troubles.

Wrap Up

Now you know how to download thumbnail images of any video without any online tool or software. Although there are several online tools to download YouTube video thumbnail, why to use them when you can do that manually without putting many efforts.