No longer able to unlock my MacBook Pro with my watch

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Level 1

8 points

No longer able to unlock my MacBook Pro with my watch

I recently upgraded from a Series 1 to a Series 4 watch and It will no longer will unlock my MacBook Pro. When I try to select the option to Use Your Apple Watch to Unlock Apps and Your Mac under security & privacy, I receive an error "You Mac was unable to communication with your watch - Make sure your Apple Watch is unlocked and on wrist, and your iPhone is unlocked." My watch and phone are unlocked when I try it. I'm using 2 Factor Authentication. I have reset each device, turned Blue Tooth off/on on each. Made sure my watch is listed in my iCloud account and is the only one. I'm on the latest software versions on MacBook, Phone (11), and watch OS. Any suggestions on what to try? It worked perfectly before when I had my Series 1.

Apple Watch Series 4, watchOS 7

Posted on Sep 29, 2020 12:56 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

mark__t

Level 1

40 points

Sep 29, 2020 1:51 PM in response to josmac87

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". If you can’t find the Sharing folder just do a search for the ltk.plist and pairing-records.plist files in the Library folder.
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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Answer 2

josmac87 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 29, 2020 2:15 PM in response to mark__t

Thanks for the reply, but this did not fix my issue. It does however return with the same error much faster, within seconds. Before it would wait 20-30 seconds before displaying the error message.

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