Grabbing a YouTube video thumbnail is easier than you’d think. YouTube uses a standard naming convention for it’s screenshot images, just replace %VIDEO-ID%
with a YouTube video ID in the format below and link directly to the image.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/0.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/1.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/2.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/3.jpg
0.jpg
is full size, while others are scaled thumbnails. There are also other sizes available for the default image that is being used for the video.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/default.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/hqdefault.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/mqdefault.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/sddefault.jpg
https://img.youtube.com/vi/%VIDEO-ID%/maxresdefault.jpg
All of these are available over https://
as well, just swap out http
to https
. You can also use the shorthand domain i3.ytimg.com
instead of img.youtube.com
if you’d like to shorten things up.