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User profile for user: jsteinme
jsteinme Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

macOS Unlock with Apple Watch not working

I recently found that unlocking my Mac with my Apple Watch was no longer working and when I tried to turn on the feature I would get an error.


Here is the checkbox for the feature:

And here is the error:

"Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch"


I have tried to follow all of the steps outlined in many of the other similar questions. These include:

  1. Restarting all of the devices.
  2. Re-pairing the watch.
  3. Removing entries from the keychain.


None of these fixed the problem. The problem started sometime in the last month. Previously I was able to unlock my Mac with my watch. My devices are as follows: MacBool Pro on macOS 12.6 Monterey, iPhone 14 Pro Max on iOS 16.0.2, Apple Watch series 6 on watchOS 9.0.


Another possibly related bit of info is that when I ran Console.app and tried to turn on the unlock feature an error "Watch missing LTK for Mac" appeared in the log.

Apple Watch Series 6

Posted on Oct 1, 2022 9:42 AM

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User profile for user: jsteinme
jsteinme Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Posted on Oct 1, 2022 10:01 AM

So I called apple support and got bumped up to a senior support person. We had already collected all sorts of logs and tried all sorts of other steps to fix the problem when the solution was found.


The Mac admin password needs to be a high security password which means it must have:

  1. Upper case letters
  2. Lower case letters
  3. Numbers
  4. Special characters


My password had the first three but not the fourth. Once I added a special character and restarted the Mac and watch the feature turned on and worked. To my knowledge this was not required previously because I was able to use the feature with my old password. Apparently some combination of updates caused my old password to be insufficient. I have not seen this solution suggested anywhere else.


Clearly there error message should mention the password requirement. I plan to file a RADAR report.


In any case, hopefully my time and pain will spare some others. 😀

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User profile for user: jsteinme
jsteinme Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Oct 1, 2022 10:01 AM in response to jsteinme

So I called apple support and got bumped up to a senior support person. We had already collected all sorts of logs and tried all sorts of other steps to fix the problem when the solution was found.


The Mac admin password needs to be a high security password which means it must have:

  1. Upper case letters
  2. Lower case letters
  3. Numbers
  4. Special characters


My password had the first three but not the fourth. Once I added a special character and restarted the Mac and watch the feature turned on and worked. To my knowledge this was not required previously because I was able to use the feature with my old password. Apparently some combination of updates caused my old password to be insufficient. I have not seen this solution suggested anywhere else.


Clearly there error message should mention the password requirement. I plan to file a RADAR report.


In any case, hopefully my time and pain will spare some others. 😀

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macOS Unlock with Apple Watch not working

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