Mac not unlocking after watchOS 7 update

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.

Thank you this worked after doing all this and then rebooting Mac. I did this after taking my watch into the Apple store and them saying it needed a firmware reinstall and wanted to charge me £264 because it was out of warrantee.

I have a follow up question:

The fix worked yesterday, but today my Mac had "forgotten" again that it could unlock with the Watch. So I reactivated (which worked without the workaround here).

My question is: Has anyone else seen the Mac "forget" this setting? If so, does anyone know why that happens?

OK I think it works, after 2 days trying and trying and TRYING, this method finally works, don't know the reason, but finally I can unlock my MacBook Pro with my Apple Watch series 3 with Watch OS 7.

Thank you very much.

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

I applied the solution and was able to get System Preferences to accept the checkmark to enable me to unlock my MacBook Pro with my watch. Just like you said the first time I tried it fail but it worked on my second try. Then I then tried to test it out but it didn't work. I then restarted my MacBook Pro and logged in with my password then logged out to see it my Apple Watch would automatically log me back in but it didn't. When I open System Preferences again to make sure that the checkmark was still there, I discovered that it wasn't. When I tried to check the box again it came back with the same message that my Apple Watch couldn't connect to my MacBook Pro. I REALLY hope that the public release of Big Sur will resolve this problem because I really liked this feature.

I have an alpha-numeric code on my phone and a 4 digit code on my watch. Are you saying that the code on my phone and watch have to be the same for it to work? Also what is the keychain two-step? Thank 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

I had the exact same experience. The auto unlock successfully worked one time after going through the solution procedure, but after that, it immediately began failing again and I am no able to turn the setting back on. I went through the keychain solution a second time, but it had no effect. Setting remains broken.

It worked!!

THANK YOU very much for this response. I probably spent more than 10 hours on phone and chat with Apple technical support and they asked me do so many things including resetting my phone, unpair and pair my watch, etc and no luck. Following these steps fixed the problem.

Worked perfectly. The only difference for me was that when I searched for "AutoUnlock" (no space) there was a 5th entry titled "tsk-piggy" and I left that alone. The other 4 entries were there and repopulated immediately upon their deletion. This worked perfectly. Thank you!

My issue is still NOT resolved. It worked a couple of times then stopped working, I even upgraded from Mojave to Catalina hoping that would fix the issue but no luck. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed my Apple Watch unlocking my system(s) until it stopped working. I read someone said that it works fine on Apple Watch Series 6, mine's series 3. Maybe that explains the issue.

This did not work for me either. Nothing in keychain had “Auto Unlock”. I called Apple a couple weeks ago and of course they recommended erasing the watch which I’d did twice and even erased and restored my phone. They said that their were a lot of complaints about this and there would probably be a software update to fix this soon.

Asside from the Auto Unlock not working on my Mac, my phone does not unlock my watch sometimes. Also my watch does not show incoming calls. That bugs me the most. The only way I can get it to work is if I do a hard restart of my iPhone but in only lasts a couple of hours before it stops working.

I’ve given up trying to fix all of these malfunctions and waiting for a software update.

I don't know how they didn't show after toggling "show invisible item" but I just tried again and found them and deleted them and followed the rest of the instructions. I followed the rest of the instructions as exact as I could but had about a dozen entries for "tlk" "tlk-nonsync" "classA" "classC. I deleted all of them and finished. I tried to enable "unlock with Apple Watch several times but had no luck. I'll do a restart of watch, phone and Mac and try again.

About two weeks ago I spoke to Apple's customer service and they told me that a lot of people were having this issue and it would probably be fixed in an upcoming update but recommended unpairing the watch and restoring it and erasing and restoring my phone which I did. I've had lots of bugs after updating to the new watch and phone OS including my phone not unlocking my watch, battery drain, caller ID not working on the watch.....Basically every bug I have read about has happened to my devises. For me these updates were a big mess.

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....