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Apple Watch 5 will NOT unlock MacBook Air

Subject says it all. In trying to enable the System Preference on the MacBook Air it spins for a while and then .... "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."


Yes, the iPhone is unlocked

Yes, the Apple Watch is on my wrist

Have restarted MacBook Air, iPhone and AppleWatch.

Have wiped the Apple Watch and set it up as a New watch


Nope. Feature now chooses NOT to work, yet it DID work before recent Catalina, watchOS and iOS updates.

Apple Watch

Posted on Oct 7, 2020 6:34 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 11, 2020 6:43 AM

Happy to report what fixed it for me, following steps originally posted here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251803595 by user stoska992, then adding a couple of steps added by others: 


FIRST, this procedure:


Steps (follow at your own discretion)


  1. Open "Keychain Access"
  2. In "View", enable "Show Invisible Items"
  3. Search for "Auto Unlock"
  4. You should see a whole bunch of application passwords for "Auto Unlock: XXXX's ..."
  5. Select all records and delete (this will reset/disable auto unlock on other Macs if you use multiple Macs)
  6. Whilst still in "Keychain Access", search for "AutoUnlock" (no space)
  7. There should be 4 entries for "tlk" "tlk-nonsync" "classA" "classC"
  8. Select 4 records and delete (don't worry if they re-appear, the system repairs this automatically)
  9. Open "Finder" and navigate to "~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock"
  10. There should be two files "ltk.plist" and "pairing-records.plist"
  11. Delete both files
  12. Open "System Preferences" and try enabling auto unlock. You may need to enable it twice, the first attempt will fail.


THEN, this command in terminal provided by contributor “isprainedmyuvula” ( …a breathtakingly creative silly handle):


sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist && sudo shutdown -r now


…Which will restart your Mac.


THEN #12 above again. And just like stoska992 writes, it indeed took the second attempt at checking the box, and out worked instantly!

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 11, 2020 6:43 AM in response to William Lane

Happy to report what fixed it for me, following steps originally posted here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251803595 by user stoska992, then adding a couple of steps added by others: 


FIRST, this procedure:


Steps (follow at your own discretion)


  1. Open "Keychain Access"
  2. In "View", enable "Show Invisible Items"
  3. Search for "Auto Unlock"
  4. You should see a whole bunch of application passwords for "Auto Unlock: XXXX's ..."
  5. Select all records and delete (this will reset/disable auto unlock on other Macs if you use multiple Macs)
  6. Whilst still in "Keychain Access", search for "AutoUnlock" (no space)
  7. There should be 4 entries for "tlk" "tlk-nonsync" "classA" "classC"
  8. Select 4 records and delete (don't worry if they re-appear, the system repairs this automatically)
  9. Open "Finder" and navigate to "~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock"
  10. There should be two files "ltk.plist" and "pairing-records.plist"
  11. Delete both files
  12. Open "System Preferences" and try enabling auto unlock. You may need to enable it twice, the first attempt will fail.


THEN, this command in terminal provided by contributor “isprainedmyuvula” ( …a breathtakingly creative silly handle):


sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist && sudo shutdown -r now


…Which will restart your Mac.


THEN #12 above again. And just like stoska992 writes, it indeed took the second attempt at checking the box, and out worked instantly!

Oct 11, 2020 5:30 AM in response to William Lane

You are not alone @William Lane. I have been experiencing the same issue, and was informed by Apple Support that their engineers are working on a fix. Apple Support had me upload a bunch of log files. In essence, they have acknowledged this as a bug, and that an update is forthcoming.


This is one of those "golden handcuff" features that once you start using it, it becomes annoying to do without. Now, I'll go work on something more important. :-)

Apple Watch 5 will NOT unlock MacBook Air

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