Unlock with Apple Watch not working after updating to Monterey and WatchOS 8.1

I managed to fix this issue without repairing my watch. Steps were:

• Open settings, privacy & security, general and uncheck open with apple watch.
• Open Keychain Access, under View menu make sure 'show hidden items' is enabled.
• Search for 'auto unlock' select all the auto unlock entries, right click and delete them.
• Search for 'autounlock' select all the autounlock entries, right click and delete them (some will instantly reappear).
• Restarted Mac.
• Open settings, privacy & security, general - then make sure your apple watch is unlocked and your iphone is unlocked and both near the mac. Then check open with apple watch.

Sorted!

Steezey's fix is what ultimately worked for me. I tried everything else until I found this.

• Open settings, privacy & security, general and uncheck open with apple watch.
• Open Keychain Access, under View menu make sure 'show hidden items' is enabled.
• Search for 'auto unlock' select all the auto unlock entries, right click and delete them.
• Search for 'autounlock' select all the autounlock entries, right click and delete them (some will instantly reappear).
• Restarted Mac.
• Open settings, privacy & security, general - then make sure your apple watch is unlocked and your iphone is unlocked and both near the mac. Then check open with apple watch.

I tried everything listed in this forum but nothing worked for me until I looked at the FaceTime preferences on the Mac. It looks like SharePlay is enabled by default. I turned this off and the auto unlocking started working for me. However, the way you unlock also matters, press enter on keyboard seems to make the unlocking consistent and move your mouse will not unlock.

Hi,

After unpairing/reconnecting the watch it was working again - now let's see if it remains stable.

This worked for me. I had to put my phone on top of my Mac Mini with it unlocked when i checked the "open with apple watch" checkbox. apparently, it needs to be VERY close.

Tried almost all steps mentioned everywhere I googled out. wasted hours. It didn't solve my problem. Then, a small change made to my screen saver settings, the problem is gone!!!!!

I noticed a light orange triangle sign next to "show screen saver after ?? minutes" (system preference -- desktop & screen saver). The warning tell me the screen saver starts after the monitor is off for saving power. So I went to (system preference -- Battery-- power adapter ) and increase the time "turn display off after" to be shorter than screen saver start time. Then the light orange triangle warning sign is gone.

well, I tried to set up "unlock with Apple Watch...". It works!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Steezey, this worked for me (deleting the hidden auto unlock entries from Keychain). No need to repair!

Yes, had to unpair and then repair for this to be sorted. Now sorted. Not happy that it required unpairing and then reconnecting, but problem sorted.

I found that updating WatchOS to 8.3 solved the problem (on both my Mini (Big Sur) and Air (Monterey)). Probably should have just tried a restart of the watch first, but <shrug>.

Called AppleCare. This worked:

1. Install iOS 15.1 on your iPhone.
2. In iPhone’s Watch app go to Settings -> General -> Reset.
3. Re-pair the Apple Watch with your iPhone and install Watch OS 8.1.
4. Now you can set up “unlock with Apple Watch” on your Mac. It will unlock your computer every time - not just most of the time like it used to.

Re-pair the devices.

All in all the "Unlock with Apple watch"-feature behaves very erratically - sporadically it does not work anymore and i have to re-enable it in the MacOS preferences - even if the box is still ticked. Sometimes i have to reset the watch - which i consider to be a waste of time - in other cases I need to disable and re-enable it in the MacOS private settings. Last time MacOS could not connect to the watch on several trials - some hours later I could tick the preference tickbox without problem - even without having my phone close to the Mac. Yay! But still frustrating.

Likewise with the iPhone feature that allows the watch to unlock the phone when wearing a face mask - sometimes this stops working without obvious cause and needs to be re-enabled in the phone settings.

Let's hope that Apple will address these annoyances since most people have better things to do than to spend hours on this "feature-fixing". Once it works it should continue to work flawlessly and reliably.

Mine works now but is a bit quirky even after the fix above. Auto Unlock won’t work if the wake action is a mouse/trackpad movement, but it will if it is awakened by a keyboard keypress. However, it will often want a password on the first attempt. I hit escape to cancel the password request, and then I hit a random key on the keyboard and Auto Unlock works.

Salutations wforan3, 

We understand that you’re not able to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch. Sounds like you’ve done some great troubleshooting already. 

Are you encountering any error messages along the way when attempting to unlock your Mac? If so, what does the message say? 

Thanks.