Search Channels thumbnail_url returns profile picture (channel logo)

[dblachut-adb]

Brief description
When searching for channels https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/api/reference#search-channels thumbnail_url property documentation is all wrong:

Thumbnail URL of the stream. All image URLs have variable width and height. You can replace {width} and {height} with any values to get that size image.

This is not a thumbnail of the stream but profile picture and does not have variable width and height.
XQC example: default 300x300 works 100x100 does not work (403).

How to reproduce
Search for channels using helix API.

Expected behavior

• thumbnail_url returns thumbnail of live or latest stream
  • additional property channel_logo or profile_picture is introduced for currently returned image
• thumbnail_url returns thumbnail of live stream if the channel is live and profile picture otherwise

Twitch cli example

twitch api get 'search/channels?query=cohhcarnage'
{
  "data": [
    {
      "broadcaster_language": "en",
      "broadcaster_login": "cohhcarnage",
      "display_name": "CohhCarnage",
      "game_id": "490100",
      "game_name": "LOST ARK",
      "id": "26610234",
      "is_live": true,
      "started_at": "2022-02-16T12:24:34Z",
      "tag_ids": [
        "c2542d6d-cd10-4532-919b-3d19f30a768b",
        "6ea6bca4-4712-4ab9-a906-e3336a9d8039",
        "96b6073f-450d-4248-8ed4-988e28f3f759",
        "54b544af-2d0e-4d17-a653-78e3f6fc1fc8",
        "eaba0ad7-c4e1-4878-b37f-01308dbb65c8",
        "1277e554-f8c9-4795-a475-27418d7bd111"
      ],
      "thumbnail_url": "https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/e3a58ce0-46ea-4558-8bb0-7a967c1d621c-profile_image-300x300.png",
      "title": "[!DROPS] - !MERCH until 2/27! - Lost Ark (Ladon / Artillerist) - HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST SOON - !LAThoughts - YouTube.com/CohhDaily - !PC"
    },
    {
      "broadcaster_language": "en",
      "broadcaster_login": "cohhcarnage1",
      "display_name": "CohhCarnage1",
      "game_id": "0",
      "game_name": "",
      "id": "80339555",
      "is_live": false,
      "started_at": "",
      "tag_ids": [],
      "thumbnail_url": "https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/user-default-pictures-uv/ead5c8b2-a4c9-4724-b1dd-9f00b46cbd3d-profile_image-300x300.png",
      "title": ""
    },
    [...]

Additional context or questions
Is this a documentation bug? I would really like to have both profile picture and stream thumbnail in response.

[scott-a-white]

Thanks for reporting the issue. Fixed the documentation portion of this issue: https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/api/reference#search-channels.

Please use UserVoice to request your product feature.

[dblachut-adb]

Thanks, why is it called a thumbnail as it is not a reduced-size versions of stream? I think it should rather be called channel_logo or profile_picture. If backward compatibility is your concern then you can probably add it and leave thumbnail_url for some time but delete it from the doc.

BTW is there any way to get live stream thumbnail for given channel?

[scott-a-white]

Have you tried https://dev.twitch.tv/docs/api/reference#get-streams?

[dblachut-adb]

Looks like this does the job, thanks. So I need to search for channel and once I obtain it I need to get the thumbnail of live stream through separate request.