You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update

Hi all,


After upgrading to watchOS 7 on Series 3, auto unlock is not working anymore. I get the "activating" message when trying to enable it again on the Mac and then the message I must make sure the watch is unlocked, on my wrist and the phone must be unlocked too. Everything checks out.


Already rebooted Mac and watch. Anyone else having the same problem? thanks!


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Apple Watch Sport

Posted on Sep 17, 2020 5:38 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 17, 2020 11:34 AM

I've finally fixed it! I found a bunch of errors related to "AutoUnlock" in the Console that was hinting to me that there was some invalid state on my Mac with keys and plists not being reset properly. 


Steps (follow at your own discretion)

  1. Open "Keychain Access"
  2. In "View", enable "Show Invisible Items"
  3. Search for "Auto Unlock"
  4. You should see a whole bunch of application passwords for "Auto Unlock: XXXX's ..."
  5. Select all records and delete (this will reset/disable auto unlock on other Macs if you use multiple Macs)
  6. Whilst still in "Keychain Access", search for "AutoUnlock" (no space)
  7. There should be 4 entries for "tlk" "tlk-nonsync" "classA" "classC"
  8. Select 4 records and delete (don't worry if they re-appear, the system repairs this automatically)
  9. Open "Finder" and navigate to "~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock"
  10. There should be two files "ltk.plist" and "pairing-records.plist"
  11. Delete both files
  12. Open "System Preferences" and try enabling auto unlock. You may need to enable it twice, the first attempt will fail.


899 replies

Nov 29, 2020 1:26 PM in response to rabboarder

Something new. So, I did the steps mentioned above by stoska992 about cleaning out the Keychain and all the other files. Then, I reset and re-paired my watch to my phone—NOT restoring from backup, but setting it up as a new watch connected to my phone. Then, I took the latest advice and made sure I had my phone unlocked when going to my MacBook. I typed in my password to unlock my computer. Then, I got a prompt to set up my Apple Watch to unlock my Mac. So, I walked through that setup. This was encouraging. I’m now hoping that the connection being property set up new in Big Sur will make it stick.

Nov 30, 2020 2:41 PM in response to KasamaDY

It's outrageous that we have to do this engineering for the folks at Apple. And that they would release an update with this kind of fundamental bug. I do not want to pay extra for an Apple product and then have to rummage around in its software guts to make a fix that may (probably won't) work. Apple is Microsofting itself...too many bugs, not enough concern.

Dec 2, 2020 2:22 PM in response to rcheverton

True but even though it doesn't seem so this is a "rare" problem. Of all the people I know personally and have checked with I am the only one who had this problem. Even then, the problem was with just one of my two Macs. Mine was recurring, lasting "fixed" for a day or so as I tried the various suggestions. But as I posted awhile back, the latest seems to have worked and is still working.

Dec 2, 2020 2:49 PM in response to KasamaDY

I followed every step including an added step - restarting the Mac. It worked, but two weeks later, it stopped working again. Now what. Saw one submission here to log off iCloud on Mac and iPhone. YAY! Now both AppleWatches are unlocking my iMac… for now. For the non-tech user, poking around in Console and deleting entries from the system folder is intimidating. I hope Apple Tech Support has seen this issue here and is working on a fix. We should NOT have to be doing these workarounds. (Today is December 2, 2020.) Thanks very much stoska992 for your submission which worked for me, but for many, the issue is NOT solved.


One change I'm noticing is that it takes a few seconds longer for my Mac to recognize the unlock whereas before it was near instantaneous. I'll take what I can get.

Dec 6, 2020 12:29 PM in response to stoska992

Thank you! A couple of points on mine. I purchased a new apple watch and updated to Big Sur at the same time. By following your instructions, I found some very old "Auto Unlock:" entries and deleted them and any other entries. I was unable to gain access to "~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock" even after entering my password, but after enabling auto unlock for the Apple watch a couple of times, it seems to respond.

Dec 8, 2020 4:27 PM in response to KasamaDY

For those who have tried all of the solutions with no luck....I can offer one more solution.


I followed all of the recommended instructions, reset/re-paired my Apple Watch, logged out/back in to iCloud, cleared AutoUnlock in keychain, etc and nothing seemed to work...


All of this was done on my 2020 13in MacBook Pro running BigSur. As a last ditch effort to see if it would help, I re-enabled watch unlock on my OTHER 2019 MacBook Pro 15in that is still running Catalina. Went back into my settings on the 13in and BOOM! It worked!


If you have multiple devices, try this method before beating your head against the wall too hard :)

Dec 14, 2020 4:33 AM in response to KasamaDY

I'm on Watch OS7.1 and BigSur 11.0.1


My mac says its unable to communicate with my watch post update.


The "fix" posted above doesn't work for me because I can't see a "View" option or any of the file names mentioned so I can't follow the steps.


Un-ticking and re-ticking the option to use watch to auto unlock doesn't work either, nor has a reboot of the Mac or Watch.


Help gratefully received!

Dec 14, 2020 11:53 PM in response to KasamaDY

Ok, so I was able to resolve this, and hopefully this will for you too! First I followed the steps to clear out the Auto Unlock entries in keychain access per the steps given on this post and then I had to basically go in and do a full reset on my Apple Watch and restore it from a backup. After doing that IT finally worked to unlock my iMac. With that being said, it then stopped working with MacBook Pro! In order to get it to work again with my MacBook Pro, I then just followed the keychain access steps above, restarted my MacBook Pro, and then toggled the unlock with Apple Watch settings on and off and it eventually worked after that. All in all pretty frustrating and time consuming, but glad it’s working now as it’s supposed to. Good luck out there!

Dec 15, 2020 7:16 AM in response to stoska992

Well, that didn’t fix it for me. Found all the plist files and killed ‘em, but the behavior is the same (or should I say misbehavior). Repeated the process and rebooted before trying to connect and still did not work. Repeated the connect step as you suggested, but that failed also. I’m glad yours worked. I’ll have to keep fiddling with things or wait for a WatchOS update....

Dec 16, 2020 8:16 AM in response to KasamaDY

If anyone is looking for additional help, stoska992's answer seems to originate on the MacRumors forum site with user LongZheng, who posted the same process the day prior to the post here. I bring this up becasue there are a lot of other recommendations in the MacRumors thread that may help when the KeyChain process doesn't work for you.


One of the most commonly mentioned is, simply to try clicking the Watch activation box a second time, or restart and try activation again. This has helped many people, though there is certainly some strange iCloud-Keychain wizardry going on in the background, and it may not work for everyone.


[Link Edited by Moderator]


Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.