How to preview your YouTube channel
- Add your banner and profile picture. Upload them the size you’ll upload to YouTube. No pictures yet? “Try a sample” fills the channel in so you can see how it works.
- Write your name, handle and description. The counters show YouTube’s limits as you type, and the preview shows where the description is cut with “...more”.
- Add your thumbnails. Drop in a few, give each a title, views and length, and see them as a set in the Videos tab.
- Switch between phone and desktop. The same banner is cropped differently on each, and long titles are cut at different points. Check both, in light and dark mode.
- Download the preview as a picture to share it or keep it next to your designs.
Everything stays in this browser, so your channel is still here when you come back. Nothing is uploaded.
Why a banner looks different on every screen
You upload one 16:9 picture (2560 × 1440 px), but YouTube never shows all of it. On a computer it shows a wide band across the middle; on a phone it shows only the centre of that band, 1546 × 423 px. Anything outside that centre, like a tagline on the far right, disappears on phones.
That’s why this preview draws the banner twice: switch to Phone and Desktop to see what each one keeps. The “Ready to post?” checks also tell you when the banner is too small or the wrong shape.
YouTube channel sizes (2026)
| What | Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Banner | 2560 × 1440 px | 16:9, at least 2048 × 1152, up to 6 MB |
| Banner safe area | 1546 × 423 px | The middle part every screen shows |
| Profile picture | 800 × 800 px | Shown as a circle, very small in lists |
| Thumbnail | 3840 × 2160 px recommended | 16:9, at least 640 px wide; up to 50 MB from a computer, 2 MB from the phone app |
| Video title | Up to 100 characters | About 70 show in search and suggestions |
| Channel description | Up to 1,000 characters | The first line shows under your name |
| Handle | 3 to 30 characters | Letters, numbers, periods, hyphens, underscores |
Thumbnails and titles that work as a set
- Put the point of the title in its first 40 characters. On phones the title wraps to two lines and is cut after that.
- Keep the bottom right of thumbnails clear. The video length sits there.
- Use two or three colours that come back. A row of thumbnails that look related reads as a channel, not a pile of videos.
- Make faces and words big. On phones, thumbnails in lists are small.
- Match the banner. The same colours and fonts on the banner and the thumbnails make the channel look finished.
What’s free, and what the app adds
This preview is free, with no account and no limit. When you want the matching pieces, aiCarousels designs carousels and image posts in your colours and fonts, from an idea you write: community posts, posts that announce a video, and the posts that bring people from other platforms to your channel.
