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
Interesting… I got it working again…! Here’s how.
The steps are generally the same as those described by @stoska992, but, here and there, I had ti add additional steps:
Yeah, same here, works a few times then stops. Even upgraded to 10.15.7 from 10.14 to see if that would fix it but it didn’t last. I’ve not tried it on Big Sur but that may be my next step with a newer Beta > 9.
I was concerned at how fast Watch OS7 was chewing through battery life, so followed some advice to unpair and re-pair the watch. Ended up having to reset it as well. Since then, no auto unlocking with the watch (although it was fine this morning before I did the unpair/re-pair). Followed these instructions and I'm still no better off. I've tried all the other suggestions I've come across on this thread to no avail. It stubbornly refuses to allow my watch to wake up my Macbook Air.
Watch 5, Watch OS 7.01, Catalina 10.15.7 and iPhone XS Max running iOS 14.0.1. All help gratefully received!
This worked for me, but I had to do it slightly differently after step 9:
I couldn't find a Sharing folder in my library, so I skipped to step 12. I got a message saying there was no application specified for opening "ltk.plist". I selected Console (in the Utilities folder) and it worked. My watch unlocked my MacBook.
It isn't working to unlock my secured notes though. The icon for unlocking with my watch shows up on my Mac screen, but my watch doesn't do anything. (A few others have reported this issue in this thread.)
PS: This was after having to unpair my Series 3 to updated to watchOS 7, then unpairing again to restore from a backup. I also tried troubleshooting by signing out of iCloud on my Mac, but it didn't do anything to help the issue.
WatchOS 7.0.1 did not resolve the issue for me. These instructions did not work either. Apple customer support told me a lot of people were having the issue and recommended unpairing watch and resetting phone and sign out/sign in my iCloud account and after trying all that they said maybe a future update will fix it....
Been struggling with this issue for almost week after working with Apple Watch team for a separate issue, where my speaker on my apple watch was not working, I could not hear the person on the other end (audio kept cutting in/out). Apple Watch team asked me to unpair / repair my watch to repair, to be honest that didn't fix my audio issue and in turn ended up breaking my Apple Watch Unlock function (Series 4 / Macbook Pro 2015). So I focused on fixing unlock issue and tried multiple possible solutions online and none worked l.e. unpair watch again, logout / in back into iCloud on Mac, Phone, Watch, NVM boot, ended up having to send Watch, iPhone, Macbook diagnostics files to Apple Senior support a few days back.
Got a call this morning from Apple Senior stating the issue is known and "no fix available, possible fix in future update" - I wasn't satisfied with that and felt like Apple was dropping the ball and to be honest didn't believe that for a second (tbh very disappointed but overall Apple Support rocks!!) anyway went online again, for like the fifth time and then found this - finally able to pair my MacBook with my watch again and I'm all smiles for a glorious Saturday morning - Thank You all!!
With much trepidation, I updated my Apple Watch SE this morning and it did not seem to undo the Watch Unlock fix we have all worked so hard to get. The update does not say it includes the fix, but who knows?
Anyway, it still works after this morning's update.
Apple Watch 3s are apparently becoming obsolete (I just got the SE for my birthday). So perhaps prime day is the perfect time to get yourself a new watch!
If you're having difficulty getting Auto Unlock to work, try these solutions: In Security & Privacy preferences, deselect ”Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac” or ”Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac.” Then restart your Mac and turn this setting back o
Thank you Stoska992. I restored iWatch 5 to backed up image of my iWatch 2. I had to delete the files as stated on all my machines and twice as well. Rebooted all devices and logged in on iCloud and apps store and enabled on all machines. It accepted it. Thank you for the valuable information in the keychain section. Kudos to You.
I had to add one extra step to stoska992's recipe to get my working. I had to go to the Login Options in System Preferences, unlock the panel, click on my username and then close system preferences. This apparently nudged something with my user account.
Note: I'm running the latest public beta of Big Sur.
Ok update with more details:
I have two Macs, and both were having this problem with my new (used) Apple Watch 5. Neither had issues with Auto Unlock on my Apple Watch 3. I followed these workaround instructions for my MacBook Pro, and after a few attempts it worked. Can't really say why it took several attempts.
Then I tried my Mac Pro, same procedure about ten times. I avoided deleting the iCloud Auto Unlock keychain entry for my MacBook Pro, since I just created it and didn't want to get into a loop of fixing one while breaking the other. I finally decided to simply turn off the iCloud Keychain in System Preferences > iCloud and delete all the Keychain entries and Sharing preferences, then reboot and turn on the iCloud Keychain again. Then I remembered another thing I tried on the MacBook, making sure the Mac and iPhone were on the same wifi network (I have a 2.5 and a 5ghz on my Airport). Also, I made sure Unlox wasn't running (I use Unlox to enter the system password and as a backup in case Apple Watch unlock fails, and they've always gotten along fine together, but I thought it might be interfering at setup). After this, the Mac Pro setup took... but then the MacBook Pro stopped working!!!
Fortunately, this time the MacBook Pro took only one attempt to get it working again. Now all is good again with both Macs.
Ok.. after MULTIPLE attempts AND resetting the Bluetooth stack per evan's post.. I finally got everything working.. Thank you evan..
Still.. this is something Apple really needs to take a close look at. This stuff used to "just work"...
Worked even though I couldn't locate the shared library. Thus all I eliminated were in steps 1-8. Tried after doing this and couldn't unlock via watch, but 30 minutes later was prompted by my Mac to turn on auto unlock. Thanks....youve managed to do what Apple Support was unable to do.
I had this same issue with up to date Catalina on a 2017 MacBook Air and a brand new Apple Watch SE WatchOS 7.0.1 and I had to log out of my Apple ID on my Mac and log back in and then restart my Mac. When I did that it made me reauthorize on my iphone and type my password on my watch and after two tries click the settings toggle for using Watch to login, it worked.
Hope that helps someone.
What did not work was
For me it worked this way
Not sure if that was clear to everyone who didn't have a success. For me it wasn't clear.
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!!! 💆🏻♀️
Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update
