Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update

Ok, I had tried numerous times on my own and Apple support steps above. Today I tried again, and didn’t work. So I went back to >security and privacy > General > turned off “require password after sleep or screen saver begins > restarted MacBook. Went back to >security and privacy > General > selected “Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac. It worked. Then to be safe restarted MacBook (= Then went back to >security and privacy > General and selected “require password after sleep. Now that both are selected and active (require password and Apple Watch unlock), I closed my MacBook to test unlocking with Apple Watch and it freaking finally worked!!! 💆🏻‍♀️

I copied and pasted it into the search field and entered. It didn’t find anything so I just went back to system preferences and checked allow Apple Watch to unlock, I had to do that twice but now it’s working again

Click on "Finder". It is most likely to the left on your dick. Looks like this "

Then go the "finder" tool bar at the top and Click on "GO", then click on "Library". In the "Library" folder you will the "Sharing" folder.

Then go

The KeyChain and file deletes didn't work for me. However, when searching console for messages with "watch" in them I saw one that said my watch didn't have "Hey Siri" enabled. I knew it did, so I went to my watch, toggled it off and on again, and a minute later the computer unlock setting worked. Computer is unlocking fine now.

Maybe WatchOS 7 is leaving the "Hey Siri" setting in some corrupted/incorrect state in some cases?

This is really bizarre. After several days when my computer didn't even put my username on my lock screen, now it's letting my watch open it. So thanks for the advice! It took a while, but it finally worked. :)

Did. Not. Work. I guess I’ll have to wait for Big Sur to get it working again. AutoUnlock worked fine until a bug in a Watch app (or at least, undesired behaviour by said App) forced me to restore my Apple Watch from a backup. After that, everything works, except AutoUnlock. I have even contacted Apple Support about the issue, and I have been waiting for two (2) MacOS, WatchOS and iOS updates (as they advised). Deleting all of the weird Keychain entries did change one thing though: the system now errors out almost instantly after I try to enable AutoUnlock, instead of first waiting for about 5 minutes… I would have LOVED it if this worked, but alas. Oh yeah: Deleting the four entries being displayed when searching for “AutoUnlock” simply made them re-appear in iCloud Keychain. And for some reason, even trying to disable that instantly reenables it… Oh well, it was definitely worth a try…

It worked for me the first time. After that no luck. I tried rebooting Mac, iPhone and Watch. Then turned Watch in Flight Mode and MacBook I turned BT and WiFi off. Then everything back on. It's been working since then.

I know, right? When I called about the issue around 2 months ago, they Apple (Netherlands) filed an official bug report. I had apparently been the first to report the issue. At least as far as The Netherlands were concerned. A few weeks later (after the first iOS update since my first call), they’d had thousands (their words) of people reporting the same issue across the globe. They advised me to wait for a couple more updates to be released for iOS, WatchOS as well as MacOS. Since then, all platforms have had these updates, yet nothing has apparently been resolved in those. So here’s hoping Big Sur will fix the issue.

I have gone as far as restoring all of my devices, including my iMac, to their factory defaults, retrieving data from backups made to iCloud (for my iPhone and Apple Watch), and creating a whole new, sparklingly fresh user account on my Mac (deliberately NOT restoring any data whatsoever at that point. Even then, I couldn’t restore AU functionality.

So then I decided my Mac’s data actually was more important to me than to get the feature working, and I retrieved all of it from my backups. So here we are at a stand-still with no AU function to be seen anywhere. Doing the finder and keychain item deletions has resulted in the time-out coming much quicker than before, and also in being notified on my Mac to turn on the feature, yet even then, when I try to do so, it fails.

FI-NAL-LY! Apple has just now released WatchOS 7.1. One of the changes in this release reads:

Resolves an issue that prevented users from unlocking Mac with Apple Watch.

Installing as we speak. Wil keep you posted on result.

The latest update did the trick for me. Whilst updating the Watch (which is a Series 4), I repeated the procedure of opening Keychain Access and enabling Show Invisible Items in the View mneu, then searching for “Auto Unlock” and deleting the entries that are displayed; then also searching for “AutoUnlock” and deleting those entries as well (the procedure is explained in more detail elsewhere in this thread). Also, just for good measure, I opened the folder ~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock/ and deleted both files there. Then, when enabling the option, it failed the first time. This is normal, because there is a bug in MacOS that causes this behaviour. So when I then enabled it a second time, it worked!

@Mista2: did you disable the function first when migrating from your Series 3 to your SE? If not, you may need to first do the procedure outlined above (and at the start of this thread) and then restarting all devices (iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac) before trying to reenable it. As I mentioned in my previous post, 7.1 should resolve this issue (it is explicitly mentioned in the Changelog for the update), so if it doesn’t work for you, additional steps may be required. Please carry out the steps outlined in the procedure above and see if they work. If not, see to it that you get in touch with Apple Support, because they may need your case to further investigate your particular instance of the issue. As I’ve said a couple of posts earlier, when I first contacted Apple about this myself, I was apparently the first user in the Netherlands who had run into this issue...

I updated my AW4 to 7.1 and iPhone 11 to 14.2. Unlocking with my watch still works on my Mac Pro and Mac mini after previously successfully using the stoska992 method with previous versions of iOS and WatchOS.

This is the only fix for this issue, and this is tested by Apple. So it should hold until they eff up something else, which is evidently what they’ve done with the release of WatchOS 7 GM. The instructions provided by Stoska992 are a workaround for anyone who is experiencing issues on the affected versions of WatchOS, but need not be applied anymore when using watches that have been updated to WatchOS version 7.2 to unlock a Mac.

The only situation in which you might need to still apply the workaround, even after a watch has been updated, is when said watch had previously failed to pair for Auto Unlock. . This is because MacOS itself is also affected by bugs surrounding the feature, which will likely not be resolved before MacOS 11.0 Big Sur.

Apple also just released macOS 10.15.7 Supplemental Update (19H15) so that makes it a trio with iOS 14.2 & WatchOS 7.1 earlier. My AW4 is unlocking my Macs and the huge battery drain in my AW4 created by WatchOS 7.0 are normal again.

The Supplemental Update for MacOS didn’t have anything to do with this issue — It fixed some critical Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in MacOS… The devices ‘at fault’ in this issue were the Watch and, in some cases, the paired iPhone. An upgrade to (the developer release of) Big Sur may also solve the issue, as the way Auto Unlock works on the Mac has been revised in Big Sur, mainly to extend the usage of the Watch.

After upgrading WatchOS and iOS last night, it all works for me now. Prior the WatchOS and iOS upgrade, it wasn't working on Big Sur prior the WatchOS upgrade. I can't test it on Big Sur though now, my system crapped out and I'm rebuilding as I type this, I'll know more if WatchOS and iOS upgrade now work on Big Sur.

Thanks for that information though.

UPDATE: Just tested on Big Sur Beta 11 and it works. Upgrading to Big Sur Release 1 now.