Paste any YouTube URL shape, watch, youtu.be, Shorts, embed or live, and get the 11-character video ID back, along with the canonical watch link and the maxresdefault thumbnail URL.
Not every video has a maxresdefault thumbnail. If it 404s, drop back to hqdefault.jpg on the same path.
| Shape | Example |
|---|---|
| Standard watch | youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID |
| Short link | youtu.be/VIDEOID |
| Shorts | youtube.com/shorts/VIDEOID |
| Embed | youtube.com/embed/VIDEOID |
| Live | youtube.com/live/VIDEOID |
| Bare ID | VIDEOID (11 characters) |
Paste any YouTube URL shape, a standard watch link, youtu.be, Shorts, embed, or live, and we pull out the 11-character video ID.
Alongside the ID we return the canonical watch URL and the maxresdefault thumbnail URL, plus a reference table of every shape we recognise.
No. If it 404s, the same path with hqdefault.jpg instead of maxresdefault.jpg almost always works.
No.
Check it against the reference table shown. A bare ID must be exactly 11 characters.