Does IINA Collect User Data or Telemetry?

No. According to IINA's official site, the player "does not include tracking or telemetry." That statement is the direct answer for anyone deciding whether to install it: IINA is presented as a media player that does not phone home with usage data. The rest of this page explains what that claim covers, how you can verify it, and where the limits of the claim lie.

What the official statement says

The relevant line on iina.io appears under the "Free and open-source" heading:

"IINA is free and open source, built on mpv and maintained by its community. It does not include tracking or telemetry."

Two things are being asserted together, and they matter for different reasons:

• No tracking or telemetry — the app is not described as collecting or transmitting usage analytics.
• Free and open source, built on mpv — the code is publicly available, which is what makes the first claim checkable rather than just a promise.

Why "open source" is the part that makes the privacy claim verifiable

A closed-source app can claim it collects nothing; you have to take that on trust. IINA's privacy statement is different in kind because the source is public. The site explicitly invites participation through GitHub, which means the same repository that holds the code is where you can inspect what the app does.

Practical ways to check for yourself:

1. Read the source on GitHub. Look for networking code, analytics SDKs, or HTTP requests that aren't tied to a user-initiated action (like loading a subtitle or stream you asked for).
2. Watch outbound connections. Run IINA and monitor network activity with a firewall or network monitor. A player that only connects when you open a network stream or fetch subtitles behaves very differently from one that pings a server on launch.
3. Check the release notes and issue tracker. Privacy-relevant changes tend to surface in release notes or community discussion, and the site links to both.

What the claim does not cover

The site's statement is about IINA itself. It does not automatically extend to everything around it:

• Plugins. IINA supports community-built plugins that can add subtitle sources, video tools, and new interfaces. A plugin that fetches subtitles from an online service will make network requests — that behavior belongs to the plugin, not to IINA's core. If privacy is your concern, treat plugins as separate software and review them individually.
• Network streams and subtitle downloads. When you open a URL or download subtitles, IINA connects to those servers because you asked it to. That's expected behavior, not telemetry.
• The website and downloads. The statement covers the app. It says nothing about analytics on iina.io itself, so don't read it as a claim about the website.

The short version

If your reason for asking is "can I install this without it reporting back on what I watch," the official position is that it does not. If your reason is "I want to be certain," the open-source code is the evidence — and that's the strongest form of answer a privacy question like this can get.