I'm not using this device exactly as intended, I have a somewhat different scenario so I thought I would share my success in case it helps anyone.
I have an LG 5K monitor and an ultrawide, and a Caldigit Thunderbolt dock. The 5K has to be connected via Thunderbolt, there are no other options for connecting this monitor. For the M1 Air, you have two Thunderbolt/USB-C ports so you can connect the 5K directly in one port, and then this device (UGREEN's DisplayLink adapter) can go in the second port and then you can connect the monitor to that, and it would work fine (I tested this).
However as you can see from my images above I wanted one cable to connect and disconnect my peripherals. So my setup has the thunderbolt wire connecting to the laptop providing power, and data. That wire goes to my Thunderbolt Dock. From there, the passthrough Thunderbolt goes to the LG 5K (on the right). The USB-C port on the Thunderbolt Dock goes to this UGREEN DisplayLink adapter. Then my second monitor connects to this DisplayLink adapter. I've connected it with both HDMI and DisplayPort and both work without issue. However I'm using DisplayPort just because I feel it provides the best picture.
Steps:
1. Plug in Adapter
2. Click "OK" when MacOS asks if you are fine with using this accessory
3. Find the folder in Finder or on your desktop that has the driver (see 3rd image)
4. Install driver
5. Second display should work (without restarting it).
Huge disadvantage as pointed out by another user:
Playing movies and TV shows from protected sources will NOT work. For example, AppleTV app, Netflix on a browser, Vudu on a browser, they will all not show any visuals anymore. I imagine this is because all that software is design to prevent people from ripping the media and this DisplayLink software probably gets flagged by its protection scheme, but I'm not sure. It didn't matter if I moved the video over to my 5K monitor which is connected via Thunderbolt, because the DisplayLink is turned on, the visuals don't work.
Now what's nice is, if I do want to watch a movie, I can simply hit the power button on this UGREEN DisplayLink adapter and it turns off the device, and then the movies work.
So if you watch a lot of movies and TV from legit sources, then this will not help unless you're willing to turn it off and just have one monitor work, which is possible in my setup because the first monitor doesn't connect through this device. It may not work for you.
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