hi, for those finding their Apple Watch stops unlocking their mac, I recently had that problem for a while. I found a couple days ago, that once I have set the unlock on, that my Apple Watch must be showing a clock face or open screen for the Auto Unlock function to work. ie the Apple Watch must be awake before starting the mac.
So first double tap your Apple Watch face then start your Mac and voila, it unlocks. Go well, regards Des
FAILS! MacBook Pro M1Max. MacOS 14.0 (Sanoma); iPhone 13 mini iOS 17.0.3, Watch 5 WatchOS 10.0.1.
I've shutdown and restarted all 3 devices (in different orders). Last Mac startup with Snoopy watch face active.
I've tried putting the watch on charging for a few minutes.
Unlocking worked fine after updating to iOS 17.0.3, but a couple of mornings later it failed to work when waking up the MacBook for the day and hasn't worked since.
Attempting to turn the function on in settings brings up a FUBAR message about the Watch not being signed into iCloud. The watch DEFINITELY is signed into iCloud. Findmy not only finds the watch, it will even play a sound on it.
The bogus error message in MacOS Settings has persisted for several years. Apple's failure to address this persistent problem is mystifying. I've read the "we don't pay attention to user ideas" notice, but failure to address an obvious bug is really poor PR.
Unlock Mac with Apple Watch
