Backstage The open-source YouTube thumbnail studio

Backstage is a free, open-source desktop app for making YouTube thumbnails that actually get clicks. Everything runs on your machine.

Features

• Layer-based editor with drag, resize, rotate, undo/redo, and auto-save
• Video frame extraction - scrub any video and pull a frame as a full-res image
• Background removal via WebAssembly (all builds) or BRIA RMBG-1.4 (open-source build)
• AI image generation with Gemini (bring your own API key)
• Carousel generator for multi-page thumbnail layouts
• Gallery with search, sort, bulk operations, and 30-day trash
• Export to PNG, JPEG, WebP, APNG, and GIF

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Bun
• Rust

Run

bun install
bun run desktop:dev

Build

bun run desktop:build

The open-source build includes BRIA RMBG-1.4 (non-commercial license). See the model page for details.

cd apps/desktop
bunx tauri build -- --features bria

License

Source code is open source. The BRIA model is restricted to non-commercial use.