Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update

Well, I finally got it working again after a very long time (Mac Pro 2013 with macOS 11.01, iPhone 11 with iOS 14.2, AW4 with WatchOS 7.1). How? I unpaired/paired again from backup my AW4 again--No Joy! Then I followed the Stoska992 steps--No Joy! Then I toggled Bluetooth off and on my Mac Pro--No Joy! Shutdown my Mac, and rebooted my AW4, rebooted my iPhone and made sure my AW4 re-connected. Started up my Mac and made sure my iPhone was listed as a location in the Finder, opened System Preferences and BOOM my AW4 was accepted in the checkbox in the Security & Privacy pane. Put my Mac to sleep and it unlocked my Mac on being awakened. Okay, let's see how long it works this time. The last several times I got it working it was only good for a day or few days.

Meanwhile, my Mac mini (2014) still unlocks with my AW4 (and original AW) and it's up to running macOS 11.1beta and has never missed an unlock ever since the feature was first available years ago.

Go figure!

I tried all the steps described by stoka992. No dice.

I reset my Apple Watch with the option to restore from a backup (a hassle - for it takes time and then I had to wait for all my apps to reload, then had to reenter all my credit cards for Apple Pay.) No dice.

I retried all of stoka992 suggestions after the reset, and it worked.

I experienced this problem with an upgrade of Catalina and now to Big Sur. Both times, a variety of solutions failed. Ultimately, I tried signing out of iCloud on the Mac, then signed back in and reactivated the “unlock with Apple Watch feature.” That solved the problem both times.

Open the finder and click on your home folder (it's the one with a house icon) then select view > show view options. A box will pop up with options you can tick off. Tick the box for show Library folder. Close that box .You will see the Library folder greyed out as it's a hidden folder.

I have tried this multiple times without any resolution. I have 2019 iMac 27" and an Apple Watch 5. Everything was working fine and now that I have Big Sur my Apple Watch is no longer unlocking my Mac and "your Mac is unable to communicate with your Apple Watch." I have recently upgraded to the iPhone 12 and I do not know if that is the problem or not. My Apple Watch also keeps asking me to sign into my account multiple times a day. None of this makes sense to me and is quite annoying considering I have tried all of this multiple times before commenting. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Because someone in the community, for whom it had obviously worked, did so.

It’s not like it’s not worked for anyone, is it, now?

Besides, have you tried following my ‘extended’ procedure, which involves doing the steps in the ‘solution’, but then also doing an NVRAM reset before trying to re-enable AutoUnlock? Also, signing devices out of and then back into iCloud did the trick for some, though I myself did not have to do so.

Unfortunately, it hasn't worked at step 12 - there is always a message:

"Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch.

Make sure your Apple Watch is unlocked and on wrist, and your iPhone is unlocked."

- but all my devices are unlocked, laying near each other etc.

Please, help

I had to reset my watch. I know that is a pain but it worked and I had tried everything else suggested. One thing I will point out, the first time tried to click the "use your watch to unlock apps and your Mac" in Security and Privacy I received the same message again, but after trying the second time it worked and it has worked ever since. Also, when you reset your watch you can reset it as a new watch or from the old info on your watch (I am a bit vague on the terms they used) but you don't have to start as if it is a new watch. I am only mentioning this because it was a choice you have to make and I didn't know what to do, but I did not have to reset it as if it was new. I am not even sure if it matters but it worked and I am relieved. Haha. Not sure where you are living but if in the States, Happy Thanksgiving

Yess, you're right! The only one thing helps, unfortunately, is to reset watch and then after setting "Allow your Apple watch to unlock your Mac" it's necessary to restart the macOS.

Thank You!

PS: we only have black friday here in Russia this time :D

Hello!

First, is the Watch iOS updated?

Second, a simply check in Security & Privacy in System Preferences and rechecking the use of Watch to sign-on worked for me. I did have to make sure the Watch was unlocked and like mentioned above, you may have to reboot it.

If that doesn't work, then I'd recommend the rest of what was suggested here.

I share this because I was about to jump the gun and start making unnecessarily changes when the issue was simply needing to revive permissions after the Big Sur update.

I have had the same issue since watchOS7 and macOS big sur updates. Unfortunately I don't recall which one actually broke it. Tried various options mentioned in this forum but the only thing which worked for me is to reset and unpair my Apple Watch and once again set it up as a new Apple Watch. After that I re-enabled unlocking with Apple Watch in Security and Privacy settings on my Mac and it started working. I hope it does not break again. Fingers crossed.

After upgrading my imac to Big Sur and my iphone to the latest update, the ability to use apple watch to sign in to my imac failed repeatedly. I got the imac cannot communicate with apple watch message. I tried all of the suggestions listed and nothing worked. UNTIL I finally unpaired the watch and paired it again. As soon as that process was complete, the watch immediately began unlocking the imac. I hope this works for all of you as well.

I am no techie and do not work at or represent Apple in any capacity....

I was having this problem and I tried everything explained on this page to get my Series 6 watch to unlock my MBP again (it once did right after I purchased it and stopped after a short while, perhaps after an update). What ultimately fixed it for me was to sign out of my Apple ID on my iPhone. In so doing I didn't save a copy of anything to my iPhone, counting on iCloud to fill it all back in. Once I went through that process and logged back into iCloud on my iPhone XS Max, I went back to System Preferences/Security & Privacy/General on the MBP, toggled the appropriate selection and this time it recognized and validated the selection. Apparently the two are communicating again. I believe the root of it all had something to do with Keychain. Anyhow, happy to say it is working again and suggest you try this as well. It took about 5 minutes after I went through the half hour trying everything else listed here. Hope it works for you!

ARGH! Following the steps including restarting the Mac, it worked for me. After a week, it's stopped working. It always worked before the Big Sur update. Hello Apple? Do you see all these reports? Something is definitely a problem. There are over 100K of us… grrr. Back to square one.

It's finally working for me. I updated to Big Sur; still didn't work. I then reset my watch; still didn't work. But then I noticed the error message said that my phone needs to be unlocked as well. I literally never saw that before. Unlocked my phone, tried again, and it worked. I'll feel really dumb if that was the only step that I was missing the entire time. Oh well.