Unlike the original PowerPC or early Intel builds, modern macOS (Catalina and later) dropped 32-bit support and OpenGL deprecation creates issues. However, modern source ports solve this perfectly.
provides a guide on extracting the necessary .pk3 files from modern digital installers that don't include Mac executables. Pushing the M1 Discussions on the ioquake3 forums quake 3 mac m1
For slightly better GPU efficiency on M1/M2/M3: Unlike the original PowerPC or early Intel builds,