A beautiful window onto someone else’s engine.
IINA is the nicest front end anyone has built for mpv, and it inherits mpv’s power and tradeoffs. Stoic owns its playback and colour decisions end to end.
A mature, free, open-source app with plugins, enormous configurability, an active community and years of releases.
IINA is free, open source and has years of releases behind it; Stoic is a new, paid app. If you want mpv configuration or scripting, IINA is the sensible choice.
Choose IINA for limitless configuration. Choose Stoic for an opinionated, display-aware picture without a config file.
| Capability | Stoic Player | IINA |
|---|---|---|
| Colour decisions | Checks the file and flags every value it inferred | Mostly trusts the file’s tags |
| Dolby Vision | Profiles 5 and 8.x, verified against a known-colour stream | No Dolby Vision |
| Display awareness | Headroom and refresh rate re-checked when they change | Configurable rather than automatic |
| Configurability | A deliberately small set of controls | Config file and plugin API |
| Review tooling | A–B loop, frame step, notes, clip export and HDR stills | Some available through scripting |
| Maturity | Version 1.0, released September 2026 | Years of releases and a large user base |
Want the Mac-first playback workflow?
One purchase, no subscription. Your licence works on up to three Apple silicon Macs running macOS 26 or later, with every Stoic update included.