Alright, here’s the real deal—if you’re hunting for a Mac video player and thinking there’s some unicorn app out there that’ll play EVERYTHING without you ever seeing another dreaded “unsupported codec” pop-up, you’re gonna be left searching until the heat death of the universe. I read through @mikeappsreviewer’s breakdown (nice lineup, honestly), but let me shoot a couple holes through the consensus and throw my two cents in.
Elmedia Player is slick—totally miles ahead of the ancient vibes you get from VLC. But, and maybe it’s just my digital luck, I’ve managed to break Elmedia on a couple of super-obscure file types (old .rmvb’s and some janky HEVC encodes). So, “plays everything” isn’t quite gospel, but it crushes 99% of what real people actually watch. The subtitle handling’s fire, too—no fiddling in weird menus trying to line up text with people’s mouths.
VLC’s like the cockroach of video players—nuclear apocalypse, and it’ll still be chomping through 3gp files. But man, that UI is ugly as sin. If you value aesthetics or literally anything other than “does it open,” you’ll tire of it fast.
IINA? Yeah, pretty and fast, but run some massive 4K h.265 files and tell me if it doesn’t start chugging after a bit. High-res anime rips? Good luck.
So, I switch hit between Elmedia Player for everyday use (seriously, why doesn’t EVERYONE have this already?) and VLC as the “I give up, just play it, I don’t care how ugly this looks” backup. Not perfect, but closest you’ll get. If you want ONE choice and don’t have a hoarder’s archive of rare formats, Elmedia Player’s where I’d start. And if Mike or anyone else finds the mythical “literally plays it all, never glitches’ beast, I’m buying a lottery ticket that day.