When comparing Kodi vs IINA, the Slant community recommends IINA for most people. In the question“What are the best video players for macOS?” IINA is ranked 1st while Kodi is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose IINA is:
It's like mpv, just more user friendly GUI and more settings available via UI.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can install on several devices
Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Xbox, Apple TV (jailbroken), and more.
Pro Lots of plugins available
Like PlutoTV, Curiosity Stream, and YouTube. 3rd party repositories, such as the SlyGuy Repository, contain more plugins like Disney+, Paramount+, Hulu, and Netflix.
Pro Free
Pro Open source
Completely FOSS, licensed under GPL 2.0
Pro Great customization/multiple skins
You can change navigation flow and other aspects of Kodi with the plethora of customization options and skins.
Pro Can play many different file formats
It supports Blu-ray Discs, CDs, DVDs, USB Flash Drives, local Hard Disk Drives, AirPlay, network file shares, basically every video, audio, and image format available, subtitle files, and even retro game console ROMs.
Pro Like MPV with better GUI and settings
It's like mpv, just more user friendly GUI and more settings available via UI.
Pro Extremely stable
Extremely stable, even while still in the beta.
Pro Support for lots of codecs
Supports lots of video codecs, like mp4, mkv, etc, and lots of audio codecs including opus.
Pro Doesn't black out other displays when going full screen
It can black out other screens if you want, but out of the box it leaves your other displays alone.
Pro Runs on MPV so it's scriptable and runs any MPV script.
More information here.
Tip: if you're doing a lot of cropping and slicing of videos and you thought the new quick tools in Finder / Quicktime Player are a great improvement, try setting up IINA with slicing.lua and some keybindings for navigating your video + setting the slicing positions.
Make sure your ffmpeg command (in slicing.lua) is set to copy the original codecs and that it's using your GPU.
Pro Online subtitle searching and intelligent local subtitle matching
Pro Fully customizable keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and gesture controls
Pro Open source
Pro Powered by FFmpeg
Cons
Con You may have to jailbreak some devices
This is only for things like a Fire stick, but Android TV boxes etc. should be fine.
Con Terrible navigation
Menus over menus with dozens of submenus.
Con Not Client/Server Capable
While most solutions provide a client/server setup the KODI developers REFUSE to adopt this approach forcing individual setups for every device.
Con Poorly optimized
Often not a fluid experience on low-end devices.
Con No official AAA addons for streaming services
It does not have any official AAA addons and fully relies on the community which result in often broken packages/addons.
Con Unstable
May crash unexpectedly, while clicking on something in the subtitles section in the right-hand panel, for example.
Con Blacks out other displays when going full screen
