Automatically Include YouTube Thumbnail As Featured Image

It’s easy to embed YouTube video in a WordPress post. All we need to do is copy-and-paste the actual YouTube URL on the post or block editor and the YouTube video will be automatically embedded.

But WordPress posting include post’s Featured image :

That means you might need to first download the YouTube video thumbnail at sites like https://youtube-thumbnail-grabber.com/, https://thumbnailsave.com/ etc., then upload it to WordPress’s Media to set the featured image <== this is the process that I dislike.

Thank goodness the process above can be automatically accomplished with Automatic Featured Images from YouTube / Vimeo by WebDevStudios.

Unfortunately though, at this point of writing, there’s this message that the plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress.

Fear not. I’ve tested it and is using it right here … so it’s affirmative that it’s working.

Note that some themes which you can set the post Format will automatically do the above even without a plugin. The Pluto theme I’m using is able to do that. So why am I still using the above plugin?

That’s because the theme also include Latest Posts right at the bottom of the post :

See the one on the right? It’s a post primarily to showcase a YouTube video. Yes, by default, the theme is showing the the YouTube thumbnail as the post’s featured image on the index page. But the “background” featured image at Latest Posts was not showing up. That’s why I’ve to use the Automatic Featured Images from YouTube plugin to let the thumbnail appears.

So the next time you’d want to automate the process to set YouTube thumbnail as the post’s featured image, you know how to do it!