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:
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.
Mine was fixed by the wOS7.1 update, then deleting the old key pairs so the watch would re-pair with the Mac successfully. Worked for a while, but today stopped again. The improvement seemed to be that at least the paring hadn't gone from the security preference panel, but it had obviously lost the pairing security. I had to turn it off, then back on again. Tested OK, by unlocking the padlock on the preference panel and using the watch button to approve. SO will see if it is still working in 24 hours, or after the next restart.
The most annoying thing about this bug is it is a feature supposed to speed up unlocking when you want to use it, but I end up waiting to see if the watch does work, then have to enter my **** password anyway when it doesn't.
paulkward wrote:
Did not work for me.
Did you upgrade to watchOS 7.1 ?
Also after the stoska992 steps sometimes need try the System Preferences -> Security enable setup multiple times. And in some cases you have to wait a few hours for the keychain changes to propagate to ALL your Apple devices sharing the Keychain via iCloud.
I tried your tip with additional command-option-PR, but still the Auto Unlock features stopped working yesterday after Big Sur update (iMac 2019 + AW 5).
Seeing the number of unsuccessful attempts I'm hesitating with the full iPhone&AW erase & restore (long, and I will lose some app config that are often a hassle to restore)
I will check if my wife has the same issue since Big Sur update or if I'm alone ;-)
Got it fixed.
I tried all this stupid nonsense, and even unpaired and re-paired my watch. Now I can't install apps on my watch. So now I'm setting up my watch as new. How much time and aggravation does Apple expect people to waste trying to get advertised features working again after they break?
The only thing that ever works for me is to unpair, then pair my Apple Watch again. Annoying because you have to re-add all your Apple Pay cards (well that is easy, but activating for one requires a call to bank which is the annoying bit) - but it does reliably allow me to set my Watch to unlock my Mac again. Had to do this twice - once when I got a new watch, and again when I upgraded to Big Sur.
SUCCESS! This may seem ironic, even counterintuitive, but I unpaired my Apple watch (series 6) from my iPhone, then re-paired them, then went in and then in the preferences Security and Privacy" successfully toggled "Use your Apple watch to unlock apps and your Mac," SUCCESS! Now the Apple Watch successfully unlocks my MacBook Pro! The Cloud had saved all my settings and re-pairing took a while but this worked.
SUCCESS! This may seem ironic, even counterintuitive, but I unpaired my Apple watch (series 6) from my iPhone, then re-paired them, then went in and then in the preferences Security and Privacy" successfully toggled "Use your Apple watch to unlock apps and your Mac," SUCCESS! Now the Apple Watch successfully unlocks my MacBook Pro! The Cloud had saved all my settings and re-pairing took a while but this worked.
I tried this several times and it did not work. However, SUCCESS! I unpaired my Apple watch (series 6) from my iPhone, then re-paired them, then went in and then in the preferences Security and Privacy" successfully toggled "Use your Apple watch to unlock apps and your Mac," SUCCESS! Now the Apple Watch successfully unlocks my MacBook Pro! The Cloud had saved all my settings and re-pairing took a while but this worked. I did have to re-enter Apple Pay security related data... but it's all good.
Yes when you unpair. But when you pair again your watch, you have the option to use the backup and when finished all your data and settings are back. really smooth and easy process.
The only thing I did is removing my cards from the wallet before unpairing and manually reinstall them at the end of the process.
Just to follow up. The stoska992 method noted as a solution in this thread worked for me--AW4 and Mac Pro (2013) running macOS Catalina 10.15.7 back in late September. However, a few days after updating to macOS Big Sur 11.01 last week, the unlocking first worked but stopped working again Monday. Yesterday, I simply signed out of iCloud, rebooted my Mac and signed back into iCloud per later suggestions in this thread but without again using the stoska992 method and unlocking started working again and still does today.
Yes I’m afraid only unpairing and re-pairing the watch worked for me. Deleting the keychain entries did not work. Can you put the watch to factory settings and then setup again from a backup? I’m guessing not...
I just brought auto unlock back to life! It didn't work after the 12 steps above (though I suspect it was a big part of my fix)
I also:
This is all very strange and seemingly impossible to scope out. Neither my AW4 (OS7.1) nor AW0 (OS4.3.2) after a couple of days can again unlock my Mac Pro (2013) running Big Sur 11.01 with my iPhone 11 (iOS 14.2). However, both AW's still unlock my Mac mini (2014) running Big Sur 11.01 just fine.
First, the stoska992 procedure worked then just stopped working. Then signing out of iCloud, restarting and signing back into iCloud worked but now it has just stopped working again without any other changes. I'm sadly giving up on this broken feature....
Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update
