IINA is close to perfect software for me. It has a minimal (invisible until I need it) UI with just the options I need a click away. Yet powerful with all the advanced features available in the menu bar should I need them.
It has clean and well organised preferences that come with sensible defaults.
I have used it for over three years and not had a crash or bug with it ever. Never failed to play a file, even partially downloaded via torrent (so just random fragments of the file it was able to handle properly rather than just error/crash out).
But what I love most is that it is just a media player. It doesn't try to be a capture tool or converter or editor. It plays video and music files and does that job superbly.
If you're a macOS user I can't think of a better media player out there. Plus it is not only free but open source!
For Windows users, there's mpv.net, which adds a GUI for configuration editing and a command palette. [1][2]
There is also mpc-qt, which replicates the classic MPC-HT UI, but with libmpv as the backend. [3]
Personally I found mpv's defaults sane enough to not need a GUI for it, but I did release an unofficial version to the Windows 10 Store with a wrapper that adds file association and macOS-style single instance support. [4][5]
iina is a really nice player, but unfortunately maintenance of it seems to have slowed quite a lot. There's a lot of piled up issues and pull requests.
You'll also find that even on the most powerful of Macs that it will struggle with higher resolution video playback that QuickTime Player, VLC, or straight mpv play without issue.
Meaning often comes easier when sentences are finished.
IINA is born to be a modern macOS application, from its framework to the user interface. It adopts the post-Yosemite design language of macOS and keeps up the pace of new technologies like Force Touch, Touch Bar, and Picture-in-Picture.
Many other media players were once born to be “modern” macOS applications. What happens when all of those things cease to be apple’s current recommendations? Will IINA cease being modern? Will there be any compelling reason to still use it?
I can’t think of a single other video player competing on macOS UX adherence over the last 20 years, source/name a couple of these many others so we can see how they died. Because it would die.
Yes, if IINA is no longer modern, it will cease being modern.
If IINA doesn’t adhere to modern macOS UX standards, but advertises that it does, there will be a compelling reason not to use it.
In general, macOS apps require constant updates every year in order to run on new versions, period. The idea that an app that competes on UX would continue implementing updates solely in the non ui realm and as a result fall out of current macOS UX practices year after year is unlikely, to say the least. It’ll just die normally.
That’s not a bad policy but it’s solid software, basically a Cocoa wrapper around MPV which as it turns out, is a fairly solid idea.
Years ago when VLC was the rage, I could open any video or sound file I wanted in QuickTime Player with an array of plug-ins including Persian, Flip4Mac and a couple others I’ve long since forgotten. That served me well until it became impossible to install and use QuickTime 7 on a modern Macintosh.
IINA quickly filled that hole for me, and was a solid upgrade over a player I never asked much from, readily replicating all the features I cared about and throwing in a few more. If all you want is a media player that lets you double click a file and play it back, IINA is the best there is on the Macintosh today.
I tried hard to think of a good answer, but I’ll be honest: I haven’t tried VLC in 15 years. My vague recollection of it was that I didn’t care for the widgets, it wasn’t as responsive as the native, preinstalled and extensible video player I already had (meaning it didn’t open and play files as immediately as I was already used to) and that it had too much window chrome for the simple task of playing back one video or sound file.
So for all I know, 15 years later VLC might actually be the best media playback player on the Macintosh and I’m just too set in my ways to realize that because I went basically straight from QuickTime 7 to QuickTime X to IINA and IINA was already such a solid upgrade that I’m not looking for another replacement.
It has clean and well organised preferences that come with sensible defaults.
I have used it for over three years and not had a crash or bug with it ever. Never failed to play a file, even partially downloaded via torrent (so just random fragments of the file it was able to handle properly rather than just error/crash out).
But what I love most is that it is just a media player. It doesn't try to be a capture tool or converter or editor. It plays video and music files and does that job superbly.
If you're a macOS user I can't think of a better media player out there. Plus it is not only free but open source!