Unlock with Apple Watch isn't working on your iPhone 13

What you need

Unlocking your iPhone with your Apple Watch requires these devices:

• An iPhone that uses Face ID (iPhone X or later) and has iOS 14.5 or later
• An Apple Watch Series 3 or later with watchOS 7.4 or later

The feature also has these requirements:

• Your Apple Watch needs to be paired with your iPhone.
• Your iPhone and Apple Watch need to have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on. (You don't need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network.)
• Your Apple Watch needs to have a passcode, and wrist detection must be turned on.
• Your Apple Watch needs to be on your wrist and unlocked.
• You need to be wearing a mask that covers your mouth and nose, or sunglasses or ski goggles that cover your eyes. 

Unlock your iPhone with Apple Watch when you're wearing a ...

Thanks for this. I tried and indeed it worked. I can now unlock my iphone 13 after following the above steps.

Just to put some context, when i received my iphone 13 i transferred using iphone to iphone method https://support.apple.com/en-sg/HT210216. This time I followed the above steps, restored from iCloud backup and there's no issue unlocking the phone with facemask on using apple watch.

It’s currently broken→If Unlock with Apple Watch isn't working on your iPhone 13 - Apple Support

Thanks to posts elsewhere I was able to fix this on my iPhone 13 Pro by doing the following:

1) Backup (to iCloud)

2) Settings/General/Transfer or Reset Iphone/Erase All Content and Settings (i.e. factory reset)

3) Set up phone using restore from backup

4) During restore, I received a message that I would be able to unlock my iPhone with my

Apple Watch

5) Once restore completed, I went to Settings/Face ID & Passcode, turned on the option to unlock with my Apple Watch

6) Waited for sync on Apple Watch to complete.

After that, unlock with watch worked.

Glad I was able to help someone else. I don't think the issue is specific to the iPhone to iPhone quick start method you referenced as my initial setup used an iCloud backup to set up my new phone. My best guess as to what is going on is that the handshake process to establish the Apple Watch unlock depends on a key that is specific to the pairing between the watch and the new phone that didn't get updated when I restored from an old phone backup. In the process above I used a backup from the new phone and that process included resyncing the phone to the watch. I presume the key got updated at some point in that process and allowed the watch unlock to work.

Did you have to reload credit cards, or reset and re-pair the watch at any point ? I did the phone to phone when I set up the iPhone 13, but the watch was paired to the old phone prior to the transfer. Maybe that broke the key transfer. The watch stopped unlocking my MacBook, but I fixed it in privacy settings.

I have the same issue. Did reset everything and try again, meet all the requirements but still not able to unlock my phone with my watch. Latest iOS on the watch and the phone.

I just did a clean install of IOS 15 on my 13 Pro Max with ITunes and now my unlock with Apple Watch works!