Unlock with Apple Watch Not Working

I was also having this issue on a new 2017 iMac/iPhone 6s/Apple Watch 1. Having restarted all three devices to no avail - I ended up having to reset and re-pair the watch (and turn off / on the setting for 'Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac' setting in System Preferences; If your Apple Watch isn't connected or paired with your iPhone - Apple Support

I was also having issues with Apple Pay at the time - I tried removing/re-adding the card but it kept saying it "could not connect to Apple Watch". Having done the reset/re-pair, this now works also - so it there seemed to be some sort of general communication issue with the watch which the reset/re-pair has resolved.

I did note that if my watch was unlocked from my phone, it wouldn't work but if I unlocked my Apple Watch on the Watch, the login would work as expexected.

Otherwise it's been working fine, even after an upgrade to iPhone 7 Plus (same iMac and same Apple Watch) am seeing a similar behaviour.

nope it was but now I'm having nothing but issues I've reset MacBook air and I've reset all devices watch and iPhone. also signed out and back in and still nothing. now i have problems signing into my mac iCloud its freezing and saying unknown error when i try to check on my iCloud account.

For me, this is only temporary fix. It works (maybe) for the rest of the work day. Then the next morning it fails.

The text "Unlocking with Apple Watch" appears for a few seconds, with a "spinning wheel," then I have to enter my password.

Hi all,

Been having this issue for ages and had given up with all the guides.

Had a hardware issue with my MBP this morning so did an SMC and NVRAM reset to bring it back to life and guess what, now the watch will unlock it!

So maybe try that.

I had this problem as well. Don't know why, but after working for a while, it stopped working. To resolve, I simply turned off the option "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac." Made sure that WiFi was turned on and connected. Then turned the appleWatch option back on. This then prompted me to enter my password. After doing so, it restarted the relevant service. Then put my MBP to sleep and woke it back up. At which point, it detected my watch and automatically unlocked.

Please note that you must have WiFi enabled for this feature to work.

Do you have more than one WiFi network in you place? Not only does Bluetooth have to be on, but both iPhone and Mac have to be on the same WiFi network. Mine was not. I ensured they were both on the same net and so far it has worked every time.

I ran into this problem after changing my iCloud password. I got the message "watch not registered with iCloud"

I fixed it by un-pairing the watch and then re-pairing again. A pain and 15 minutes to do but worked

I had been using this feature for about a month on my iMac without problems until yesterday when it simply stopped working. It would consistently display "Unlocking with Apple Watch" along with a spinning cursor for several seconds and then give up and just present a password field.

I tried various suggestions from this and another thread (restarting all devices, turning handoff off / restarting / turning handoff on repeated for all three devices, removing a nearby external drive, connecting to the 2.4Ghz band instead of 5Ghzetc.), but nothing worked.

Finally I noticed that on my mac I was signed into iCloud using *.me.com email where on my phone I was signed into iCloud using *.mac.com email address. After logging out of iCloud on my iPhone and then logging back in using the *.me.com version everything worked perfectly again.

I have no idea if this was a fluke or something that might be generally useful. Also it may have been that simply signing out of iCloud on my phone and signing in again was what finally fixed things and changing the .mac iCloud ID on my phone to .me had nothing to do with it. Also FWIW, all three devices (iMac, iPhone, watch) were running the most recent OS versions.

I'm having this issue too. The restart phone, watch then iMac seems to work consistently but the problem quickly arises again. How are other people finding things, after their reset? Any more permanent solutions?

Tried unpairing & pairing; also turning off WiFi & Bluetooth; also rebooting iPhone, Apple Watch 2, and MacBook Air. Still fails to unlock MacBook Air. Running latest public releases of macOS, iOS, watchOS.

This use to work, spoiled by how easy it use to be. Frustrated. 😟

Same here I have tried pairing and unpairing phone, logging in and out of iCloud on both my mac and iPhone. Auto Unlock only works when bluetooth on the iPhone is OFF. If bluetooth on iPhone is ON, the auto unlock feature doesn't work. I hope iOS 11, the new watchOS and macOS resolves this issue. I have talked to AppleCare and they copied the logs from my mac etc... its still an open case and they are trying to if they can resolve it.

just wanted to update everyone

my auto unlock feature has somehow resolved itself…. I didn’t make any changes but the watch now unlocks the mac even when bluetooth is turned on on the iPhone

Everything ok for now

Hi, I had this problem for a few months. My MacBook Pro early 2015 was not unlocking using my Watch.

One day I left my iPhone in the car a couple of times and couldn't be bothered to go to the car park to get it and when I went to open my MacBook lid its started unlocking using my watch again all day long. The next day I remembered my iPhone and it stopped working again. So I turned my iPhone off and tried it again and it worked. So it worked when my iPhone was completely disconnected from my watch by turning my phone OFF. ALSO, I did try just turning Bluetooth OFF on my iPhone and tried it again but for some reason that did not work.

After troubleshooting some more, I figured out that I was trialling the iOS 11 Public Beta on my iPhone, while my Watch was still on the normal WatchOS 3. Today my watch requested an update to Watch OS 4 and my iPhone is on full iOS 11 non-BETA and now the auto unlock works when connected to my iphone.

So, in summary, ensure your iPhone OS and Watch OS are aligned to the latest OS or equivalent versions (either both carrying latest BETA OR non-BETAs).

I went above and beyond and spent hours on the phone with apple support and at the end they were able to get it working only when created a new mac user on the OS - but not my regular user.

what fixed it at the end is that i needed to sign out from icloud from my user, and sign back in, in that process, it will ask you to re-enter the mac password couple times because its encrypted and mac doesnt have access to it. after re-signing in to my icloud account (which is same as my phone obviously). it worked!