After iOS 14.7.1 update my iPhone doesn't unlock my Apple Watch

According to:

If your iPhone doesn’t unlock your Apple Watch after updating to iOS 14.7 - Apple Support

iOS 14.7.1 should have fixed that issue. All I can suggest is to restart your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone. If necessary (device not responding), try a forced restart. Both methods can be found here:

How to restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

If that doesn't help, the next steps would be to unpair and pair your watch again and restore from the backup just created. This should result in no loss of data. It deletes all temp and corrupted files and re-indexes the file system.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Unpairing my Apple Watch from my iPhone https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204568

Then pairing and restoring my Apple Watch to my iPhone https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204505

Cured my Apple Watch unlock via iPhone issues.

Some have found the unpair, then pair has worked.

For me, I’ve found me unlock window is very narrow. I have to have the Apple Watch numeric screen on the display while I unlock my iPhone. If the Apple Watch turns off the display before I get the iPhone unlocked, I have to start over.

Yup same here. Was working just fine with 14.7 and face idea. Now they have 14.7.1 to FIX Apple Watch not unlocking and now my watch doesn’t unlock from my face is 12 Pro Max. I have rebooted both device. Turned off phone unlock from watch. Then re-enabled from my phone and it prompted me for pin on watch. But not it still doesn’t work. I have to put the pin on the watch. Doesn’t work at all having the phone do it now.

Update on my unlocking issue - unpairing/pairing was not the reason it worked.

Turn off "Unlock with Apple Watch" under iPhone settings -> Face ID & Passcode (for touch ID, it may be slightly different title).

This is a bug, and Apple will most likely issue an update in the next few days/weeks.

If you want both, you may be able to do the following dance (assuming you have Face ID; not sure if this will work for Finger Print Reader iPhones):

o iPhone screen blank (screen off)

o Raise Apple Watch until the numeric passcode unlock screen appears.

o Then immediately wake the iPhone and unlock it.

If you wake the iPhone too early, it will not work.

If you wait too long to wake and unlock the iPhone, it will not work.

NOTE: You may find suggestions to Unpair and pair the Apple Watch again. This ONLY appears to work, because that turns off "Unlock with Apple Watch". It a lot of work, to turn off the option you can do yourself in just a few seconds.

A BIG Thank You, BobHarris! Turning off "Unlock with Apple Watch" cured the problem for me, as well.

I wish I'd come upon your note earlier! I've already unpaired and paired my Watch three times since 14.7.1 only to see Face ID unlocking stop working after at most a couple of days (the time it takes me to remember the few extra settings that are not restored from the Apple Watch backup). X)

I did the unpair/pair sequence myself, before I read somewhere that the unpair/pair sequence just turns off the "Unlock with Apple Watch" option.

After that I accidentally discovered my dance to unlocking.

I’ve done the Unpair/Pair routine and it worked! Twice. Done the shut down/restart thing and it worked, Once. Not going to try the Raise the wrist and quickly open the phone thing as it’s not all that user friendly. At this point I use my passcode on the watch screen and wait for the next major update to see if that actually brings back a feature that once upon a time worked. BTW, I’m actually an Apple user (logged in) and NOT KeychainChanges as shown above (whatever that is)

I have found that’s the only way also to get my iPhone 12 pro to unlock my watch.

That’s what I do now. Wait till the numeric keys to come up before unlocking my phone. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.

Worked for me as well. (Restarting both devices didn’t. Living with it until next update as not happy erasing and restoring watch with no guarantee that will work).

Thanks Bob