IINA media player
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 11 of 38 music players by recommenders
A free macOS video and music player built on mpv, praised for clean, no-frills playback, scripting and reliability. One critic reports problems with some color spaces.
A free macOS video and music player built on mpv, praised for clean, no-frills playback, scripting and reliability. One critic reports problems with some color spaces.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 95%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 21 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Best free video player on macOS
“The best Media Player on macOS. It is so good I often wished macOS shipped with it as default.”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “IINA 1.5.0” “MPlayerX and IINA are the best free video players for macOS, hands down.”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Show HN: We missed Winamp, so we built an audio player for macOS” “IMHO the de-facto video player for macOS”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English” Reliable for years of daily use
“I also like IINA and have used it extensively in the past”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Show HN: We missed Winamp, so we built an audio player for macOS” “has been perfect for everything for years”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs” “IINA is a fantastic player”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Roku LT Operating System open source distribution” Plays both video and music cleanly
“a video Swiss Army knife that just plays video and doesn't force me into an experience I don't want”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items” “You open the music you download with something like IINA or Doppler, and you're off to the races.”
Comment from 29 Jun 2026 in “Tidal AI Policy” Built on mpv, scriptable
“MPV-based player GUI on macOS, https://github.com/iina/iina is quite good.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File” “IINA is my go-to mpv wrapper nowadays”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs”
Other music players people recommend
The four most recommended other music players, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VLC media player | 172 | 83 | 67% | 12 | 20 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| mpv media player | 82 | 12 | 87% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Infuse video player | 78 | 11 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Kodi | 64 | 38 | 63% | 12 | 15 yrs3 owners | — |
| IINA media playerThis page | 21 | 1 | 95% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
15 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“use IINA on our macOS devices because it does colors better than VLC”
“The best Media Player on macOS. It is so good I often wished macOS shipped with it as default.”
“You open the music you download with something like IINA or Doppler, and you're off to the races.”
“IINA is much better on Mac”
“IINA is my go-to mpv wrapper nowadays”
“a video Swiss Army knife that just plays video and doesn't force me into an experience I don't want”
“IINA is a fantastic player”
“I also like IINA and have used it extensively in the past”
“MPlayerX and IINA are the best free video players for macOS, hands down.”
“IINA on mac is scriptable, so I just use shortcut keys to send start/end indicators to a script”
“IINA is known to have problems with color spaces”
“MPV-based player GUI on macOS, https://github.com/iina/iina is quite good.”
“IMHO the de-facto video player for macOS”
“has been perfect for everything for years”
“watching them with IINA etc.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.