Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update

this worked for me ... with the additional steps taken

1. shutdown all computers, iPads, watches, etc.
2. power down my router
3. wait 2 minutes 52 seconds
4. power up the router
5. startup all computers, iPads, watches, etc.
6. my iMac was able to then *communicate* with my watch s3
7. it took another 10 minutes for my iPhone X to see my watch s3 ... but eventually did

THANK YOU!

I'd just about given up. The I went to the Keychain and did the search for Auto Unlock and it came up blank. I toggled Handoff on all devices and restarts on all of them, then I went back to the Keychain. This time the files came up when I searched for Auto Unlock and AutoUnlock.

Unlock my Mac with iWatch worked after the second attempt.

Solution did not work for me nevertheless good explanation.

The reason why the unlock did not work after the major updates was because I change my access code on my AW4 that is different then my iPhone. I change my password back to the same password of my iPhone and everything works again.

I hope this will help some of you

The reason my Auto Unlock stopped working was because of the difference between the code of my AW and iPhone. Just try to change your code on your AW and iPhone to at least 8 numeric code and reboot both device and Mac . I hope this will solve the problem

Finally. After following the steps and then shutting down my AW and iPX, restart the MB12. Try the first time fail. Disable wrist detection and try again, it asked to enable wrist detection. After enabling wrist detection and then try again. Voila!

Thanks guys!

Re: Twinklehead

Thanks for all the help. I followed all instructions and it still doesn't work.

Didn't work for me at first either, but I think because I have 4 Macs and an iPhone all sharing the keychain, that it took awhile for all 5 systems to finish exchanging update messages and get a stable keychain between them.

It turns out the next day, I tried to enable the System Preferences -> Security option, and the firs time it was rejected as before, but because several posts said you have do do it a 2nd time, this time it worked.

I can unlock my personal and my company Mac using my Apple Watch again, and it has remained functional for several days now. I think I had to enter my password twice since then. Once for the personal and once for the company Mac.

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?

Thanks. Worked like a charm. Apple watch is on WatchOS 7.1 though. It is mentioned in the change log of 7.1 update that watch unlock issue faced by some users is fixed. Users might want to upgrade to 7.1 if the above steps doesn't work.

If Apple Pay is holding you from reinitialising your Watch, don’t be afraid. You can easily try to see if it’ll solve your problem like before. All cards previously added to your watch can be added again at the tap of a button. Even if you set up your Watch as a new Watch, the setup process will guide you right through it. As I’ve stated here a while ago, I had previously restored my Watch (as well as my phone) multiple times to get it to work. At none of those instances did I lose my ability to use Apple Pay afterwards. I have three cards that I use with Apple Pay, and all of them work flawlessly after no less than 6 full restores of my Watch (some, but not all of them took place well before the release of WatchOS7.1). So Apple Pay doesn’t have to hold you back — It doesn’t, and you shouldn’t let it.

Before you begin to try doing it with a restore (which could very well just be what it needs in your case), please verify that:

• Auto Unlock (‘Use your Watch to unlock apps and your Mac’) is disabled in  > System Preferences > Security and Privacy > General;
• Auto Login is disabled on your Mac (same spot);
• In Keychain Access, all entries containing AutoUnlock and Auto Unlock have been deleted;
• The contents of the folder ~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock/ have been deleted (not applicable in your case, since the folder doesn’t exist).

Use the steps outlined by @stoska992 to do this.

After verifying this, unpair your Watch on your iPhone and afterwards, immediately create a backup of your iPhone itself, either to iCloud or your Mac. If you use your Mac, please encrypt the backup.. Do not do ANYTHING else on your iPhone before finishing backing it up.

After completing the backup of your phone, you could even restore your phone to it, for good measure. To do this, head to Settings > General > Reset and select Erase all content and settings. Caution: ONLY do this after you’ve created a backup!

Next, when your iPhone finishes erasing itself, follow the steps presented and then opt to restore it from the backup you’ve just created. If you created your backup using your Mac, you obviously also need to use it to restore the backup.

If you used your phone and iCloud to carry out the restore, you will at some point also be presented with the option to restore cards previously added to Apple Pay. Select all of your cards and provide answers to additional questions asked to restore them. For credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American) restoring them literally only involves you providing the 3 digit CCV code located on the back. For bank cards/debit cards (Maestro, VisaPay; provided by your bank) you will usually receive an SMS with a code that needs to be entered. Upon reception of such messages, the code will even be automatically populated for you most of the time. After the restore process has been completed, all cards will be usable again as before. You may have to change your default card if you have more than one.

After your iPhone’s restore is complete, let it sit there for a while and have it finish installing apps and what not. This may take up to an hour depending on your internet connection. As soon as you can use your iPhone, you can proceed to also restore your Watch. To do so, open the Watch app on your iPhone, pair your Watch, select Set up for myself, select Restore from backup, if multiple backups exist, select the one you’ve just created and complete the restore process by answering questions that you may be presented with as desired. At some point, you will also be asked about Apple Pay and what cards to restore. Select all your cards and walk through the restore process, which is similar to what I described above. Do not, at any point, skip or postpone any step in the process of restoring either your phone or your watch, as doing so may result in data loss, which is what we’re trying to prevent in the first place.

After both your Watch and your phone have been restored, I’d advise you to wait several days before trying to enable AutoUnlock again. When you do, the process should be as simple as going to  > System Preferences > Security and Privacy and enabling ‘Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac’.

Hi finally tried to log off and on from iCloud on my iMac (in conjunction with the keychain trick). It worked and I can now unlock my Mac with the AW. So far, no need to do the same on my iPhone/AW.

Thanks for the advice.

Pierre-Yves B wrote:

Hi finally tried to log off and on from iCloud on my iMac (in conjunction with the keychain trick). It worked and I can now unlock my Mac with the AW. So far, no need to do the same on my iPhone/AW.

Thanks for the advice.

This solved it! Logging out on the Mac + Keychain stuff made it work!

Thanks a lot

Update

A few more iterations of toggling the AW Auto Unlock in System Preferences, along with systematically rebooting my AW5 & MacMini Big Sur...Voilà! Everything is working. Unfortunately , I have about 12hrs of my weekend gone from me from this inconvenience...hope your experiences are better than mine with the lates OS updates.

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 faced this issue two times:

• after upgrading my Apple Watch Series 6 to watchOS 7
• and again after upgrading my MacBook Air to macOS Big Sur

This post helped me two times: https://miapple.me/how-to-fix-auto-unlock-apple-watch-on-mac-not-working/

• Fix 2 for my first issue
• Fix 1 for my recent issue with my macBook

It is crucial that iCloud Handoff is working! If handoff does not work, auto unlock will not work!

I did not need to reset any device in any case!

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.