Turn a tweet into a YouTube thumbnail
YouTube serves thumbnails as small as 120 pixels wide in sidebars and search, so the only thing that survives is large, high-contrast type. A full tweet card shrunk into 16:9 becomes unreadable mush, which is why the padding here is tight and the card fills the frame.
Paste a link above to see the preview here.
Have a list of tweets? Use the bulk converter to turn them all into a ZIP.
The card keeps the author's name, handle and timestamp so your export credits them. The post itself still belongs to whoever wrote it, so check you have the right to reuse it before you publish.
The export is 16:9 and well inside YouTube's 2MB thumbnail limit. Metrics are hidden by default because engagement numbers are illegible at thumbnail scale and only steal space from the words.
Questions
- What size is a YouTube thumbnail?
- 1280 by 720 pixels, 16:9, under 2MB. YouTube accepts larger but downscales, so there is nothing to gain from exporting bigger.
- Why is the padding smaller on this page?
- Thumbnails are displayed tiny. Filling the frame keeps the text legible at 120 pixels wide, which is where most impressions happen.
- Should I add a face or arrow to the thumbnail?
- That is a design decision beyond this tool. Export the tweet card here and composite it in your thumbnail editor if you want extra elements.