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

Unlock with watch worked fine until I upgraded from Big Sur to Monterey 12.1 this weekend.

Neither Steezey's solution of removing the Keychain entries nor re-pairing my Apple watch made a difference in this particular issue, although re-pairing did fix some issues I didn't realize I was experiencing. Going back to Security & Privacy, I do have the option of checking the box, but it hangs at "Turning on..." for several minutes before "Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch."

This is why whenever there is a new major OS release I hold off for months. I'm experiencing so many strange bugs with this update and it's driving me crazy.

I unpaired my Apple Watch 3 and repaired it, but my Mac still can't communicate with the watch to turn on the unlock-mac-with-watch feature.

This exactly! Unlock with Apple Watch works once, then never again with macOS Monterey. I have tried everything, all hardware has the latest OS installed, and it still doesn't work properly - unlocks once, then stops working. This is with an M1 MacBook Pro, so it doesn't work with even Apple's own chip! Worked perfectly with macOS Big Sur.

Hello,

Same here. Auto-unlock stopped working after the Monterey upgrade. In a way it's good to see I am not alone :-)

Wifi is enabled on both devices, watch has Bluetooth enabled.

Restarted Watch, rebooted Mac, etc.

When I try to enable the Auto-unlock in the settings I get error message "Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch." after several minutes. It worked fine with Big Sur.

Regards.

No tried all tricks I was able to find on the internet but can't get this thing to work.

Did a clean install of Monterey and transferred my data and config via Migration Assistent from a Time Machine Backup.

Last resort would be unpairing my watch but I do not want to make this effort now with unclear outcome.

I am using Catalina. But it only works 30% of the time.

It will go for a couple weeks then suddenly it works for a day or so and then not working again for weeks? What is the issue with this inconsistency?

Same here. Unlock worked flawlessly with BigSur. Since Monterey it only unlocks once and then stops.

I updated my S6 watch to 8.1 and it still unlocks my Mac.

No error messages, it just stops working. It works once, then stops. Worked flawlessly with MacOS Big Sur.

Same here. Running OS 7.5 on an Apple watch 3. No longer unlocks Mac, and can no longer be used to confirm purchases, sign in, etc.

Thanks - I followed the hint you posted earlier - I missed it at first view :-)

I have done that twice already and it´s not working. I get an error message about the watch not having the same AppleID as the Mac but it does.... very frustrating!

I don't even get the option anymore . . . This sucks.

Same here. Tried everything, but Watch still failing to unlock iMAC after recent Monterey and Watch OS updates.