Apple Watch not unlocking Mac (resolved)

Hi parsons3, You responded to the OP. But I am assuming you meant to respond to me, Mr. Luigi. Checking to make sure you were not inadvertently auto-logging out of your Mac was a long shot. But it was worth a look. The symptom you describe is not unusual for folks who have this problem. The unlocking message will appear, then goes away, as if the opportunity to unlock via your Watch has timed out. Have you HARD reset your Apple Watch. Hold down both side buttons on the Digital Crown side of the Watch. (That’s the only side of the Watch that has 2 buttons so it’s hard to mess up! 😆) The screen will go blank. KEEP HOLDING DOWN THE TWO BUTTONS until the Apple Logo appears. This could take a while…10-15 seconds. Let go of the buttons when the Apple Logo appears and allow your Watch to go through its start up procedure. Pray to God it works. 🙏

On Mac mini 2018 running 15.0.1 with Watch Gen 7 os 11.1. Didn't work. Message in setting says "Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch. Make sure your Apple Watch is unlocked and on wrist, and your iPhone is unlocked."

Further, no problem with my MacBook Air tho it's running OS 14.

Any suggestions?

I tried a number of things including:

• Turning Use Apple Watch to unlock your Mac off/on multiple times
• Restarting Mac
• Turning Apple Watch off and on

But the very last thing I did before it actually worked was turning Use Touch ID to unlock your Mac off and back on

I clicked Me too because I experienced the same issue except upon a Restart the setting is disabled again on the MacBook. MacOS is at Sequoia 15.1.1 and the settings fail to persist. 

Opened Settings and Touch ID & Password

I turned Use Touch ID to OFF

Restarted

Turned Unlock with Apple Watch to ON

Syncing appeared

Exited Settings

Put the MacBook to Sleep

Woke the MacBook from Sleep

MacBook Unlocked with AppleWatch.

Restarted the MacBook 

Logged on using credentials

Opened Settings and Touch ID & Password

Both Use Touch ID to unlock your Mac and

Apple Watch are set to OFF

I expected Use Touch ID to be OFF but not, Apple Watch.

Turned Apple Watch to ON.

Logon with credentials appeared

Entered credentials

Syncing appeared

Quit Settings

Restarted

Logged on with credentials

Opened Settings

Opened Touch ID & Password

Apple Watch is turned OFF.

Still not resolved.

This recipe did not work for me.

One additional symptom for me - "Unlocking with Apple Watch" message appears briefly, and then disappears and is replaced by box to type password. This worked seamlessly until a couple of weeks ago.

Apple Watch Series 10, iMac 2019 - all up to date software

Hi bgparsons3! I have also experienced what you described. It's as if the "handshake" between the Mac and Watch fails to complete in the alloted time so the system defaults to manually entering the security code. It's possible something is interfering with the bluetooth/wifi connection between the Mac and Watch. On some Macs, the Bluetooth radio is close to the USB ports and devices connected to those posts could be interfering with the Watch-Mac connection. If it's not totally inconvenient, you could experiment by temporarily removing as many devices from the USB ports as possible...all devices if you can. Then see if your Watch unlocks your Mac. If it works, then start to add back devices one at a time, checking to see if the Watch still unlocks your Mac. Proceed until you find an offending device OR PORT. It is possible the interference is not from a connected device but one of the USB ports. For example, on pre Apple Silicon Mac Mini's, like the 2018 Intel Mac Mini, the USB port at the back left of the Mini (as you look at the Mini from the Front) was known to cause problems with the Watch unlocking the Mini. The solution was to not use that USB port. Not ideal. But it worked. Here's another idea that is completely random and I have never heard of it being used before. Full confession, I just thought of it while writing the above thesis! 1) Go into your Mac's settings and turn OFF the Unlock my Mac feature on your Mac. 2) Change the password on your Mac. 3) Restart your Mac 4) After using your new password, go into your Mac's settings and turn back on "Unlock my Mac with Apple Watch." Let it go through the syncing process. Pray harder than in the past. 😂 P.S. Since the "changing password" idea takes less time than the USB port procedure you might want to try that first. As they say in the X-Files," The Truth Is Out There." What is that truth? I haven't a clue. And so we continue to experiment. 💪

Hi pdb206, My fingers are crossed for you. A hard reset (forced restart, reboot) can often fix problems if some janky, bad code pollutes your device as it will often remove the offending bits and bytes. 🤞

Some of you might appreciate knowing this. When you go into energy settings and turn on “Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off," your Apple Watch WILL unlock your Mac even after extended periods of non-use.

• Preventing sleep is important:

If your Mac is set to sleep immediately when the display turns off, your Apple Watch might not be able to trigger the Apple Watch unlock function due to the lack of active connection. 

I am having this issue with an apple watch 10 and Mac book air m3. The issue is only with safari and no other browser with the autofill and the passwords app. I have tried the items mentioned before however they have not worked any thoughts?

I also tried to search for that app on the watch and it seems it is not on the watch. This seems to be an odd one as chrome seems to work fine but the safari browser or password app seems to be where the disconnect is unless anyone else has had this issue.

Hi,

Not sure if you have the same issue as me, but we have 2 wifi networks at home, 1 for the 2.4ghz and 1 for 5ghz.

Despite ensuring that the watch and Mac were on the same one I still had issues. So I went into my wifi network settings on all my Apple devices and asked them to "forget" the 2.4ghz connections and ensured they were all on the 5ghz one. (expect it will work the other way around)

Bingo! All running smoothly now. Hope this helps!

I had the Apple Watch unlocking the screen on my Mac mini running 15.5, i changed to a new wifi environment. The new wifi IS NOT CONNECTED to the internet, just as a bridge to connect the Mac mini and the Apple Watch. Tried many times and the error msg is the same “mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch…..”.

Does the wifi bridging the 2 devices have to be connected to the internet ???

Thanks for this! I was able to do this without the sleeping/shutdown/restart step in (2).

Update: Recent update to Sequoia 15.1.1 seem to fix the issue.

This proposed solution worked flawlessly, thank you. This is such a cool feature, I was getting worried it wouldn't work after the latest OS update.

This didn't work for me, however my watch filled in my password at this site so I can type this.

S8 watch, Mac Mini.

I've tried restarts, etc.