The templates gallery
The Templates screen is a gallery of proven thumbnail layouts — the structures that reliably perform, each with a tag and a short note on what it is for. They are not fill-in-the-blank files you open and edit. They are style references: pick one and the generator builds your scene, with your face and your headline, in that shape.
Using one
- Browse Templates to see what is available and what each layout is for.
- On the dashboard, click Reference template to open the picker — the same gallery, inline.
- Click a template. A preview appears on the dashboard confirming it is set.
- Fill in the rest of the brief — avatar, headline, scene description, mood — and generate.
- Clear it with the X on the preview if you want the generator to compose freely instead.
The same picker offers Upload your own image, which is how you use one of your own past thumbnails as the reference.
A template constrains the shape, not the content
What carries across is composition, balance, text placement and density. What does not: the template's subject, its words, its face. Your saved avatar always wins.
Choosing by format, not by looks
The instinct is to pick the prettiest template. The better instinct is to pick the one whose format matches your video, because thumbnail formats map to video formats:
| Video | Layout to look for |
|---|---|
| Reaction, reveal, result | Big face, strong expression, minimal text |
| Comparison, review | Split frame, two subjects, versus structure |
| Tutorial, how-to | Subject plus the object, clear step or number |
| List, ranking | Large number dominant, subject secondary |
| Warning, mistake | High contrast, alarm colours, single hard message |
| Transformation | Before / after split |
Building your own template set
The gallery is a starting point. What you actually want, after twenty videos, is three of your own layouts that you rotate:
- Look through Projects and find the three thumbnails that performed best.
- Download them.
- Upload each as a reference when generating a video of that same format.
- Better still: skip generation entirely and open the original in the editor, swap the face and replace the text.
Three known-good structures, chosen by format, is what a professional channel actually runs on. The collection management guide covers how to maintain that set as the channel grows.
Layout ideas by niche
If you want to see which structures dominate in your specific category before you commit, the niche pages break down the layouts, colours and design rules that perform in eighteen different categories — gaming, finance, cooking, true crime and more — with the templates that suit each.