Why is unlocking my Mac with my Apple Watch unreliable?

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Why is unlocking my Mac with my Apple Watch unreliable?

I have my Apple Watch and my Mac set up so that the watch is supposed to unlock the Mac. This usually works, but quite often, after the Mac has been sleeping, the screen says "unlocking with Apple Watch" but it doesn't actually do that, and after a bit I have to put my admin password in. I see this as a bug - if the watch isn't going to unlock the Mac, then it shouldn't ever display the "unlocking" note. Is there a way to stop this happening? I'm using an Intel iMac running MacOS Ventura 13.2 with an Apple Watch running WatchOS 9.3, but the issue existed in earlier versions.

Posted on Feb 6, 2023 2:33 AM

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Richard.Taylor

Level 6

9,936 points

Feb 6, 2023 10:43 AM in response to Living Fossil

While mine sometimes says that the signal is too weak to open, it never says it's unlocking when it isn't. I wonder if maybe there are some odd things going on with your Mac. Try restarting your Mac in Safe Mode, and see if the problem persists. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, possibly with caches and login items.

How to start in Safe Mode depends on which Mac you have, so see this:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

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Why is unlocking my Mac with my Apple Watch unreliable?

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