Touch ID not working, again
I have an iMac M1 from 2020. I updated from Big Sur to Monterey around ten days ago. Since then, I keep having issues with Touch ID. I noticed that there are two variants of the problem, so lets be clear on distinctions:
Variant 1. Touch ID stops working when being touched, but works when the Touch ID button is held pressed for a few seconds. The issue occurs every other day, I haven't noticed any pattern which might indicate reasons. Power-cycling the keyboard solves the problem (bluetooth reconnects automatically).
Variant 2. Touch ID stops working after the iMac wakes up from sleep. It is fully dead then and won't respond (i) neither to unlocking the desktop, (ii) nor for unlocking the password manager, (iii) nor for creating new fingerprints. The only thing that helps is rebooting. I originally reported of this variant of the problem here. Back then, the problem was reproducible and after trying one of the proposed solutions, it hadn't happen again for about 24 hours, so I marked it as solved. However, today it happened again (and I cannot revert the "solved" state of the original thread). This time, the problem, seems to be not reproducible, at least it doesn't occur every time the iMac reverts from sleeping. Power-cycling the keyboard doesn't help.
There are some maybe interesting observations regarding Variant 2:
- Bluetooth does not reconnect the keyboard automatically.
- After reconnecting the keyboard manually, the settings for Touch ID remain disabled.
- Adding new fingerprints doesn't work (it says I should use a different sensor).
- Only rebooting solves the issue.
This feels like an issue with the bluetooth driver. Just a feeling. Please, Apple, just fix this issue. The iMac isn't even three months old. I cannot believe I'm having that much trouble with a that new machine. There are 14 people on the original thread saying that they have the same problem, so it obviously is a common issue.
