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User profile for user: MBarbaWWH
MBarbaWWH Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Thumbnails on videos sometimes not working on Iphone

We MUST have a certain thumbnail on videos. We added through various steps:

  1. Add it as an image for the first seconds of the video
  2. Select it as favourite frame on the video using Mack and QuickTime Player
  3. We also add it on to the video's description as an icon (save as png and pasted it there)


We then airdropped the videos to an iphone 12 (IOS 18) and tested the videos and the thumbnail was always there.


Then, days laters, only a few videos had the proper thumbnail and then others didn't. The videos who didn't have it, have the same screen size, and same thumbnail size.


We tried restarted the phone and the video seems to randomly choose the thumbnail. It is not even the beginning or the end of the video.


Any tips?

iPhone 14, iOS 16

Posted on Nov 4, 2024 5:30 AM

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1 reply
User profile for user: Urquhart1244
Urquhart1244
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
143,064 points

Nov 4, 2024 12:08 PM in response to MBarbaWWH

Videos can be marked (tagged) as Home Video, or as Movie, or as TV Show (or as Music Video). Untagged videos will be treated as Home Video. With iOS 18/macOS 14 or later, for home video files, the Apple TV app will automatically pick a frame as thumbnail, unless the file has embedded artwork. On older OS versions, any embedded artwork may get disregarded. Other apps may show the set artwork, but not the older Apple TV app. On-the-fly thumbnail creation from an automatically chosen frame may not work for some video codecs (e.g. HDR), but should work fine for H.264 AVC. Custom thumbnails from embedded artwork will work for videos tagged as Movie (or TV show), even on older versions. A 16:9 aspect ratio for the thumbnails will be used. Different aspect ratio images will be shrunk to fit proportionally.


I personally like to use the Subler app for adding embedded artwork, as it also helps me with other meta data and file optimization. The Apple TV app on Mac also supports adding artwork, but it seemed that was sometimes linked but not embedded in the media file, thus no good for transferring later.



  1. Manual first frames may not be the most reliable. Please use the .mp4/.mov/.m4v meta data tags for artwork.
  2. Poster frames or favorite frames are no longer an option in QuickTime Player 10.5, afaik.
  3. Media player apps may choose to ignore custom document icons.
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Thumbnails on videos sometimes not working on Iphone

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