Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch

Thank you WolF22, this solved it for me as well. The key was:

1. Critical Step: Doing a full Sign Out on iCloud on the mac. (I did save cloud data so it's faster to log back in. This took quite a while, since icloud stuff had to update stuff).
2. Restart mac and phone, just to be sure.
3. Sign into icloud on mac again
4. Verify iphone is signed in correctly (I had to create a icloud security passcode for some reason).
5. At this point Sierra actually asked me if I wanted to login with watch. A good sign! I said yes, but nothing happened ;-).
6. Finally, go to System Preferences and check the Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac checkbox. It works immediately.

Definitely keep trying. The feature is worth it, even if it's hard to setup.

Update: Just to be extra clear for you all still trying! You should sign out of facetime, messages as well on your mac. Make sure you're on the same wireless network, have bluetooth, are fully updated, and the watch is unlocked and rebooted. Good luck.

I did try for days and now I really give up. Frustration is the only word I can use.

I did try all suggestions in the whole internet but "it simply does not work".. unbelievable!!

Switched on/off handoff, verified handoff, logged in/out of icloud, enabled 2FA, restarted iPhone, Watch and MBP, connected to same wifi, did try on 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz network, verified Watch connection without iPhone, verified handoff with Mac.. IT DOES NOT WORK!

Agreed. It's very frustrating and demonstrates how Apple builds products these days that no longer "just work."

In my case, after setting up 2FA, turning on and off and on again Handoff on both Mac and iPhone, I tried to actually use Handoff on the Watch and saw that despite it claiming to be connected and have Handoff set up, it wouldn't actually work. I turned Handoff off again and on again and immediately tried to use the Watch to control the Music app on the phone. That worked, and then using Apple Watch to unlock my computer worked.

It took about an hour to save me 5 seconds 20 times a day ... in about a month, it will pay off. Why, Apple, why?

I did what you said but unfortunately it didn't work.

handoff works perfectly, i was able to use handoff from Watch to iPhone and from iPhone to Mac with music app from the watch, message app from the watch but nothing changed.

Not even when I turned on and off handoff on all devices.

I had the same problem. Tried to turn off handoff on my iPhone, did not work. I tried to restart iPhone and Apple Watch. Still not working, then i changed my password for my mac. Before it had danish characters like Æ in it, then i was allowed to turn it on. So if your password has any speciel characters, then try changing it.

I can confirm Nfriis's report. 'Special' characters -- those not normally found in the standard English alphabet -- were causing my problem. I had tried *everything* I possibly could, including all the things mentioned in this thread. After changing my password, I changed it back to its previous value, and the watch still unlocks the laptop.

Apple, this is really kind of pathetic that you'd miss something as basic as this.

Worked for me. But the first time it tried to unlock from the watch, "wireless signal to weak" even though the watch was 2 ft from the Macbook. I tried again holding the watch right up to Macbook. It worked. After that, worked like a charm. But we'll see . . . it worked once for a couple of weeks in the past.

Dear Joel

I'm glad it worked for you. It took me days to figure it out. Unfortunately this fix doesn't always work for everyone, but it's worth a try.

Kind Regards

WolF

Thank you so much, Nfriis! Restricting my Mac password to ASCII characters finally solved the “unable to communicate with your Apple watch” problem for me. Phew.

Have you tried signing out of iCloud on your iPhone and Mac, then signing back in?

Tried EVERYTHING! Nothing worked but your method worked perfectly! Thanks bro!! *two thumbs up*

Greetings from Amsterdam the Netherlands.