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I’m working on a small web tool where users can enter a YouTube video URL and get the video thumbnail in the best possible quality.
Right now I’m extracting the video ID and using the standard YouTube thumbnail links like:
https://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/maxresdefault.jpg
The problem is that not every video has a max resolution thumbnail. In some cases, this URL returns a 404 error or only lower-quality images are available.
What I want to achieve is a way to automatically get the highest available thumbnail quality for any YouTube video. If maxresdefault is not available, it should fall back to hqdefault, mqdefault, or any other available version without breaking.
I know I can manually check different URLs one by one, but I’m wondering if there is a cleaner or more reliable way to handle this in JavaScript.
Is there any API, method, or recommended approach to always fetch the best available YouTube thumbnail quality?
