Change YouTube Shorts Thumbnail Easily

When you upload a YouTube Short to the web from within YouTube Studio, you probably know you can’t change the thumbnail on there, which is super annoying when you want your channel page to look all pretty and match your regular video thumbnails!

When I was uploading a short via my phone (the main YouTube app, not YouTube studio)
while I was away from home a few weeks ago, I noticed the little pencil icon and realised that you can totally change the thumbnail this way!

So all you need to do is either pick whichever shot you want from the timeline, or what I do is to design a thumbnail and add that into my video while I’m editing it. I recommend adding it to the final couple of seconds rather than at the beginning, because with shorts it’s super important to get right to the point asap before people scroll on by!