Fix Missing YouTube Thumbnail on Facebook Post

Fix Missing YouTube Thumbnail - Header Image

Have you ever set up a video post on Facebook and had it populate with generic information and no thumbnail image? This article will show you one way to fix the missing YouTube thumbnail and information on Facebook.

Getting the Missing YouTube Thumbnail to Show Up

Recently, I made the mistake of scheduling a Facebook post for a video that hadn’t been published yet. What’s the problem with that? Well, since YouTube hasn’t published information on the video publicly yet, Facebook doesn’t have any information to grab. Which means instead of a nice preview post I get a boring, generic post like this.

Missing YouTube Thumbnail-01-Generic-Info

Even after the video was published. Facebook seemed to have cached the original information, and would still give the generic preview. This was frustrating! Fortunately, I found a way around it by using a link shortener to create a new URL for the video.

I like to use Goo.gl, but bit.ly or any other service will work just fine. Just put the video link into the field, grab our shortened version and head back to Facebook.

Enter the shortened URL into your post, and you should have all of the information populated.

Missing YouTube Thumbnail-02-Good-Info

This is a simple fix to an otherwise frustrating situation.

Watch the Video

Watch the video on fixing missing YouTube images to see it in action.

I hope you found this article to be helpful. Comment and let me know what you think.

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