Text Overlay Tool

The Text Overlay tool lets you add bold, eye-catching text to your thumbnails — the kind of big, styled text that top YouTube creators use. Everything is rendered in your browser, so changes are instant.

Getting Started

1. Go to Utilities in the sidebar
2. Click Text Overlay
3. Upload a thumbnail image
4. The editor opens with your image on the left and controls on the right

Adding Text

Type your text in the Text Content area. Keep it short — 2-5 words work best on YouTube thumbnails.

Font options

• Impact — the classic YouTube thumbnail font. Bold, condensed, highly readable at small sizes.
• Arial Black — a clean, modern alternative
• Helvetica — professional and versatile
• Oswald — trendy condensed font popular with creators

Font size

Use the slider to adjust from 24px to 200px. For YouTube thumbnails, 60-120px is the sweet spot — large enough to read in search results but not so large it overwhelms the image.

Style Presets

Quick-apply preset styles that emulate popular YouTube text treatments:

• Bold White — white text with black outline and shadow. The most common YouTube style.
• Yellow Impact — yellow text with black outline. Great for "shocking" or attention-grabbing titles.
• Red Alert — red text with white outline. Works for urgent or dramatic content.
• Clean Dark — black text with white glow. Best on lighter backgrounds.
• Neon Glow — white text with colored glow effect. Eye-catching for tech/gaming content.

Click any preset to instantly apply it, then customize further if needed.

Customizing Text Appearance

Color

Pick from the 6 preset colors (white, black, yellow, red, blue, green) or use the custom color picker for any color you want.

Stroke / Outline

Toggle on to add an outline around your text. This dramatically improves readability against busy backgrounds.

• Stroke color — usually black or white, opposite of your text color
• Stroke width — 1-10px. 3-6px works best for most sizes.

Shadow

Toggle on to add a drop shadow for depth.

• Shadow color — black with some transparency is most common
• Blur — higher values create a softer, more subtle shadow
• Offset X/Y — controls shadow direction

Positioning Text

Two ways to position your text:

1. Click on the canvas — click anywhere on the preview image to place the text at that position
2. Use sliders — adjust the X and Y position sliders for precise placement

Downloading

Click Download to save the final image as a PNG at 1280x720 (standard YouTube thumbnail resolution).

Tips

• Contrast is king — always use an outline or shadow to make text readable against any background
• Less is more — 2-4 words maximum. If you need more, split across two lines
• Position strategically — avoid covering faces or important visual elements
• Test at small size — YouTube thumbnails appear tiny in search results. If you can't read your text at 160px wide, it's too small