I wanted a dead-simple way to grab YouTube thumbnails in full resolution and turn them into custom covers—without signing up, without watermarks, without leaving the browser. So I built ThumbGrab.
What it does
1. Download any thumbnail in every resolution
Paste a YouTube URL, and you get all five sizes at once:
-
maxresdefault(1280×720 HD) -
sddefault(640×480) -
hqdefault(480×360) -
mqdefault(320×180) -
default(120×90)
If maxres doesn't exist (creator didn't upload a custom thumbnail), it auto-falls back to the next best quality.
2. A built-in Cover Enhancer
This is the part I'm proud of. Reusing a raw thumbnail verbatim isn't great for SEO because it's already indexed by Google. So ThumbGrab lets you:
- Add your own title text
- Pick a brand color
- Apply a gradient mask (top/bottom/center)
- Export a 1280×720 PNG that's unique and on-brand
All rendered on a <canvas> in real time.
3. Pulls video info via oEmbed
Title, channel name, avatar—fetched from YouTube's oEmbed endpoint via noembed.com (for CORS). No API key, no quota.
How it's built
- Single static HTML file, ~44KB
- Pure vanilla JS + Canvas 2D API
- Hosted on Cloudflare (free tier)
- Zero backend, zero tracking
The whole thing runs client-side. The URL you paste is processed in your browser; nothing is stored.
Try it
Feedback welcome—especially on the Cover Enhancer UX. What would make it more useful for your workflow?
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