Level 1

101 points

Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch.

When I installed WatchOS 7 on my Series 4, I had terrible problems with the battery life. Usually when I put my watch on the charger at night, I would have about 50% battery left. After the update, my watch would last maybe 8-10 hours and then I'd start getting the 10% battery warnings. One of the solutions I found online was to unpair my watch from my iPhone and then pair it again. Doing this appears to have fixed the battery drain problem, but now I can not turn on the option to unlock my MacBook Pro with my watch.

To enable unlock with my watch I go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy and tick the "Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac." Sometimes I get prompted for my password to unlock my disk and sometimes I don't. In either case, "Turning on..." with a spinning icon is displayed for a few seconds, and then I get an error message from the subject of this post. It also says to "Make sure your Apple Watch is unlocked and on wrist, and your iPhone is unlocked."

This was working before I unpaired and re-paired my watch. I have tried all of the suggestions that searching for this error message brings up, including restarting everything, making sure everything is on the same WiFi network, disabling/enabling handoff, restarting bluetooth, disabling/enabling auto-unlock of watch from phone, logging my MacBook out of iCloud and back in again, etc. Nothing seems to help me get this option enabled again.

I would really like to get this option turned back on again. Any other suggestions?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 21, 2020 6:59 AM

Top-ranking reply

mark__t

Level 1

46 points

Posted on Sep 25, 2020 9:07 PM

This isn’t my solution but was posted in another thread by stoska992, but it worked for me!

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)

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

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Similar questions

384 replies

LexVAPin

Level 1

75 points

Nov 23, 2020 5:13 PM in response to Steve-S-2020

I somehow was able to restore my AppleWatch. Of course, when I got through tech support, it loaded right back up without a hitch. While we were waiting for it to load, he asked me if I had done other things such as those in the posting above, which I had.

While we were waiting for the watch to reload, we got disconnected and I was not able to get back in touch with him.

I was then able to sign in with my watch on my Mac. This morning, it did not work to sign in on my Mac. This afternoon it does. That is pretty much how reliable it was before all of this started. Sometimes it works.....

Nov 25, 2020 9:41 AM in response to LexVAPin

Thanks, Lawrence. Like you I went through the full gamut when the problem first started. Then, when WatchOS 7.1 arrived, the unlocking of our Macs started intermittently. It was only then that I thought of restarting the watch. I wonder if that was the crucial step - and I wonder too, of course, whether it will all turn to worms after a couple of days. The behaviour is rather like an old analog device…

dmlilol

Level 1

4 points

Apr 17, 2021 2:47 PM in response to duZ3N

Everything that you mentioned plus updating the iOS on the watch helped me solve this (had to try a few times on selecting the "unlock computer with Apple Watch..." through...thanks for the thread !!!

X54Jaz

Level 1

4 points

Oct 10, 2020 4:46 PM in response to TiggerGTO

Did you ever hear back form Senior support on this issues ? I am in the same position they told me fix will be in a future upgrade, nothing can be done now to fix this.

Addick53

Level 1

4 points

Oct 13, 2020 4:37 AM in response to TiggerGTO

Interesting. I have just updated my watch (series 3) with WatchOS 7.0.2 and the unlock now works OK. Hopefully the issue has been resolved in this code?

Oct 16, 2020 8:19 AM in response to 26glenn

Ok you inspired me to try again, this time instead of restarting the computer I did not reboot. And that worked!!!!!

I am all good now!

Thanks

Mel

BobHarris

Level 9

58,643 points

Oct 23, 2020 3:22 PM in response to mark__t

I just transferred my Apple Watch to a new iPhone, and lost my Mac Auto Unlock.

The Keychain and Finder delete instructions worked! 🤯💥

Nov 4, 2020 4:21 AM in response to TreyLagger

It only worked temporarily - went back to not working. I tried Nabs01 solution of disabling unlock with iPhone and that has worked for me.

ianb11

Level 3

553 points

Nov 19, 2020 8:51 AM in response to timurray2000

Mine works 100% until my wife logs in on her ID & then the Watch unlock packs up.

I could just reset the keychain all the time but I really can't be bothered.

MarkPek

Level 2

254 points

Dec 14, 2020 10:52 AM in response to TiggerGTO

Did the 12-step thing several times. No joy. I un-paired and re-paired my Watch (Apple Watch 6 and Catalina) -- and that worked. Or maybe it was the walking away for a while. All good right now.

Gishman

Level 1

4 points

Apr 29, 2021 11:32 AM in response to TiggerGTO

Deleting Auto Unlock entries related to my MacBook Pro and Apple Watch solved the issue.

I did not follow the guide others suggested.

To anyone having the same issue try this first.

Good luck

duZ3N

Level 1

9 points

Sep 23, 2020 12:19 AM in response to TiggerGTO

After spending hours trying tons of various suggestions for exactly the same issue, this suggestion solved the issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251803595

What I did after following the above (just in case it mattered):

Toggle "KeyChain" off and then back in iCloud settings on the Mac.
Restart the MacBook.
Then, went to enable the "Use your apple Watch..." checkbox and after 1-2 attempts, it worked!

Sep 24, 2020 8:44 PM in response to TiggerGTO

I'm having the same problem.

In my case I had been using my Apple Watch 5 successfully to unlock my MacBook Air (purchased within the year) and 27" iMac (also purchased this year).

When the new phone, iPad, and watch updates were released last week, I installed them on my phone and iPad (probably not relevant here) and Watch. After the update the watch was burning through battery power at a high rate — where before I would end a day with maybe 30% left, now it was running out of juice by late afternoon. To resolve this problem I finally read that I might need to unpair and repair my watch and phone, which I did.

After successfully repairing watch and phone the watch no longer would unlock my Air and iMac. On both Macs I went into the Security & Privacy Control Panel and checked the box to "Use your Apple Watch to unlock apps and your Mac." The Macs would spin their wheels for perhaps a minute and then I get the "Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch" message.

I rebooted the watch and the computers and the problem persists.

Sep 25, 2020 2:00 AM in response to TiggerGTO

Same issue here - after having to repair a Series 5 due to excessive battery drain. Tried this suggestion, did not help - receiving same error message - "Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch."

This is unacceptable for an OS upgrade ( on any device ) that it renders both the normal operation and advertised features useless. Disappointed with Apple on this one.

akyjoe

Level 1

4 points

Sep 25, 2020 5:45 AM in response to TiggerGTO

I had the option enabled and after updating to iOS14 and watchOS7, the auto unlocking screen stopped working. However, the Apple Watch side button to auto-type system password was working fine. The moment when I toggled that Checkbox, it is never enabled ever since. This is definitely an issue post the latest update!

Apple seem least bothered as about 10% of the Apple user are aware, that such a feature even exists. :-P

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Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch.