Set thumbnail for reels/shorts/tiktok
Jim Makos
When posting to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, it'd be nice to upload a cover photo as a thumbnail, too. I suppose it is impossible to scrub the short video and pick a frame, so adding a thumbnail manually could do the trick. These platforms do allow us to add custom thumbnails natively, so maybe it's available in the API, too.
Melissa Patrice
Hey Jim, good to hear from you again!
For Instagram Reels - we already support it. A field to upload cover will show up if only Instagram is selected for publishing, and if user has uploaded a video.
From the API, TikTok only allows us to set a cover by frame. Technically we could support this by allowing user to specify the exact millisecond of the video they'd like to use as cover, we just haven't prioritized it.
For YouTube Shorts - this is a fairly recent feature from them to support thumbnail for Shorts (I know they have been doing it for longform video for awhile). unfortunately the API has not supported it yet for Shorts. I'm keeping an eye on the API changelog and will definitely pick it up once supported.
Jim Makos
Melissa Patrice ahh, thank you so much for the heads-up and the insights! I guess I'll keep updating the thumbnail manually after posting. No big deal; it'd save a few minutes of work, though. Keep it up!