I cannot see "Allow your Apple Watch to Unlock Your Mac"

horsenation wrote:

Followed all the steps.

horsenation wrote:

UPDATE. I discovered that there was an uninstalled update for my watch.

The first step in the support article linked in my first and second replies is:

"Set up Auto Unlock

Make sure that your Apple Watch is using watchOS 3"

Automatically unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch - Apple Support

More information:

Update the software on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

I checked all of these and my Watch OS is new one but still i can't see that check mark on my mac!

Any advice?

Yes, I realize that. I can read. As I said, my watch did NOT alert me to a new update, so I assumed that it was up to date. My mistake. I admitted that. I posted my update to be helpful to others that might not have received an update alert on their watches, not to be chastised publicly by you. I didn't have to post the additional information at all. No worries, I won't be posting here any further. If I discover something that might be helpful to others, I'll just keep it to myself, Jonathan. As a goodwill ambassador, you fail.

horsenation wrote:

UPDATE. I discovered that there was an uninstalled update for my watch. For some reason, there was no alert for the update that was visible on my watch. I discovered it by accident. Once I completed the watch OS update, the option for my watch to unlock my mac appeared. I checked the box and it has worked perfectly ever since. I had assumed my watch OS was up to date because it wasn't showing the usual indicators to alert me to the new update. Check for OS updates on your watch. If there's an uninstalled update, take care of that and then, see if the unlock your mac option appears.

Thank you for posting this. There might be more users being fooled by the absence of an update notification.

I'll just keep it to myself...

Please don't. 🙂

How could it be? what you do to fix it?

I had this issue. I met all the criteria listed, but it still didn't show up.

I had to unpair my Apple Watch and then re-pair it as a new watch. Then I could see the option. But I still have the problem that I cannot actually **set** the option. When I click it, it says "Turning on..." then sends me to the iCloud preferences (why?). When I go back to the Security and Privacy settings, it remains unchecked. !!!

Thank you! You are awesome! I tried everything I could find on the internet and your solution about the watch not being logged into my Apple ID fixed my problem. You are awesome!

You are most welcome! 🙂

I had the same problem . After unpairing apple watch with iphone and repairing , the option in my imac appeared . No need to sign out icloud .

One problem I ran into was that I had my Mac configured to use my iCloud password to log into my desktop. Apparently, Apple discontinued this feature (why?!?) but I wasn't aware of it. When I tried to enable the unlocking using my Apple Watch, it sent me into a strange set of screens asking me to setup a password without any explanation.

What I eventually figure out was going on was that I FIRST had to turn off the feature of using my iCloud password to log in to my desktop and establish a NEW password for my desktop. Only then could I enable the two-factor authentication properly and then have the unlock setting "stick".

this was helpful

Check this page for system requirements

Automatically unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch - Apple Support

In my case my Mac is older than Mid-2013 so I can't see "Automatically unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch" 😟

I too had this problem, did all of these steps, yet did not get the checkbox to appear. Then I saw that my FaceTime ID on the watch was a different AppleID. So, I had to unpaid the watch to correct this. Once I started the pairing process and reinstalled from backup, the checkbox appeared, before the syncing was even complete. Magic.

I'm having the exact same problem. WiFi and Bluetooth are on, both Macbook and watch are logged into same iCloud account, password is set, etc.