VLC, the popular open-source media player is available on almost all platforms, and given the recent changes in the Mac lineup with the M1 silicon, the player just got updated with full support for Apple's M1 Macs.
The M1 equipped Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and the Mac Mini will now be able to squeeze out the maximum performance using the new VLC update. The software will now be able to perform faster and more efficiently on the new platform.
Mac apps do not necessarily require the native ARM code to run the applications on the M1 laptops, since these laptops include Rosetta 2, the software compiler to run x86 code binary on ARM hardware, and as per the reviews till now the transition layer works quite well for the x86 codec.
VLC version 3.0.12 comes with a version ready for M1 Macs, along with enhancements such as a fix for audio distortions and adaptive streaming resolution, and security improvements, along with some visual updates to match the BigSur UI.
The new version does not have a universal binary, as spotted by 9to5Mac, which means that ARM code is not included by default, so you would need to first update your VLC to version 3.0.12 and then check for updates again and update it to version 3.0.12.1 which is the ARM optimized version.
Version 3.0.12 brings general fixes and improvements to all the platforms, including better Blu-ray support and fixing some crashes when using Direct3D 11 on Windows. The ARM version should see improvements while playing back 4K or 8K video files on VLC.