User blog:ZakaSonza/How to get High-Resolution thumbnails from YouTube videos

In my efforts to get highest-quality images possible for pages on this wiki, I discovered a way to download the thumbnail for any YouTube video, in the highest resolution possible.

YouTubers will usually upload an image with their videos that is used as the thumbnail for that video. They are only seen when the video is shown in a list however, and this image doesn't appear in the video itself (unless the uploader has not added a thumbnail, in which case a thumbnail is created from a frame of the video).



The problem with these images is that because they are designed to load quickly, YouTube makes them quite small and therefore rather low-quality. However there is a way to obtain the file in its original quality, just follow these simple steps!

I haven't tested this extensively, but it seemed to work for all of the videos I tried.
 * 1) Find the video you wish to download the thumbnail for.
 * 2) Right-click the thumbnail and select "View Image" in Firefox, or "Open image in new tab" in Chrome.
 * 3) The URL of the page that opens should look something like: " https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MXBVGazDPQw/mqdefault.jpg ".
 * 4) Change "mqdefault.jpg" to "maxresdefault.jpg" and hit Enter.
 * 5) You will now see the high resolution image, right-click it and choose "Save As" to download!

Hopefully this guide proves useful!