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Apple Watch no longer unlocking Mac after Ventura 13.3 installation? [MERGED]

R

Rick America

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 1, 2007
65
25
Anyone else see this problem? After upgrading my M1 Air to Ventura 13.3 yesterday (in addition to upgrading iPhone to iOS 16.4 and Apple Watch to watchOS 9.4), I find my Apple Watch is no longer unlocking M1 Air. My Mac recognizes that my watch is there when waking up, but it will not unlock and flips me too the touch-id or password screen.
 
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Go to System Settings - Touch ID & Password, then check that the option to unlock using your watch is enabled at the bottom of the preferences pane.
 
yes, there appears to be a bug. it was in the 13.3 beta also. not just Air also Macbook Pro. checking system settings, it doesn't think your watch is logged into your appleID, and the switch to turn on watch unlocking won't take. it's been like this for at least 3 weeks.
 
schwerd said:
yes, there appears to be a bug. it was in the 13.3 beta also. not just Air also Macbook Pro. checking system settings, it doesn't think your watch is logged into your appleID, and the switch to turn on watch unlocking won't take. it's been like this for at least 3 weeks.
Click to expand...
Thank you
 
Rick America said:
Anyone else see this problem? After upgrading my M1 Air to Ventura 13.3 yesterday (in addition to upgrading iPhone to iOS 16.4 and Apple Watch to watchOS 9.4), I find my Apple Watch is no longer unlocking M1 Air. My Mac recognizes that my watch is there when waking up, but it will not unlock and flips me too the touch-id or password screen.
Click to expand...

I've reported this via Feedback Assistant and encourage others to do so for greater emphasis.
 
Since updating to macOS 13.3 I can no longer sync my Apple Watch To my Mac to unlock my Mac or applications.
I have tried to select it on on System Settings, but after trying to sync it repeatedly reports that “Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch”. Yet my Apple Watch is working normally. Has anyone else encountered this problem or found a fix?
 
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This used to work, but I can't make any promises:

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.
It seems not to work at first, and then a few hours later it will be fine. Maybe it has to sync with iCloud. I don’t know.
 
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Same problem...
Apple Pay broke, Watch broke, Dock started to flicker...

WTF APPLE .. why even bother releasing update if they break everything ..
 
I had this problem since updating earlier this week. And now, all of a sudden, it started working again. 🤷🏼‍♂️
Did not change/modify anything...
 
13.3 update went fine, but ran into the not unusual "Watch no longer unlocks Mac" issue when I got a new phone a couple of week back.

Post #10 and #15 are the usual steps, but it took me a few times through the steps get it to finally stick, a couple of shutdown/restarts of the Watch and Mac.

In my case, chalking it up to wonky iCloud: just seemed like nothing was communicating properly to Apple servers. Might have even done #16 post suggestion (sign out of iCloud) but can't be sure I did.

(fixed links)
 
Last edited:
I seem to have fixed all of the Continuity issues in my setup, including unlock with Apple Watch. Mind you, my Watch is the only device I have not updated yet. It's still on 9.3.1 watchOS, though I don't think it matters because I was experiencing the same inability to unlock the Mac as others are here.

All I did to "fix" the issue here was:
  • changed/updated my iCloud account password
  • toggles various Continuity things off and on again, e.g. the Unlock with Apple Watch feature, Handoff, settings for Universal Control, etc.
  • and of course rebooted once or twice.
In the end I'm able to use Continuity features across all my devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac Studio, M2 MBA), including unlocking both of those Macs with the Watch, Handoff, AirDrop, Universal Control and Continuity Camera.

I opted for just changing my iCloud password instead of logging in and out of iCloud because it's simply easier. The effect is essentially the same in the sense that iCloud account data in the bowels of macOS is probably updated / re-initialized. Logging out and back into iCloud would've needed to be done on all devices and would have the side-effect of removing iCloud data from the device (e.g. Photos libraries), only to re-download that junk again when logging back into iCloud. Nah... rather not. Changing the iCloud password on one device doesn't require logging back into that account on the other devices, with the exception that you might get bumped out of FaceTime and Messages (on the Macs) and have to log back into those.

We'll see if this holds. I've rebooted several times on all devices and it seems to be holding.
 
f00f said:
I seem to have fixed all of the Continuity issues in my setup, including unlock with Apple Watch. Mind you, my Watch is the only device I have not updated yet. It's still on 9.3.1 watchOS, though I don't think it matters because I was experiencing the same inability to unlock the Mac as others are here.

All I did to "fix" the issue here was:
  • changed/updated my iCloud account password
  • toggles various Continuity things off and on again, e.g. the Unlock with Apple Watch feature, Handoff, settings for Universal Control, etc.
  • and of course rebooted once or twice.
In the end I'm able to use Continuity features across all my devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac Studio, M2 MBA), including unlocking both of those Macs with the Watch, Handoff, AirDrop, Universal Control and Continuity Camera.

I opted for just changing my iCloud password instead of logging in and out of iCloud because it's simply easier. The effect is essentially the same in the sense that iCloud account data in the bowels of macOS is probably updated / re-initialized. Logging out and back into iCloud would've needed to be done on all devices and would have the side-effect of removing iCloud data from the device (e.g. Photos libraries), only to re-download that junk again when logging back into iCloud. Nah... rather not. Changing the iCloud password on one device doesn't require logging back into that account on the other devices, with the exception that you might get bumped out of FaceTime and Messages (on the Macs) and have to log back into those.

We'll see if this holds. I've rebooted several times on all devices and it seems to be holding.
Click to expand...


Scratch all of that. Ugh.

Subsequent reboots of the Mac Stdio and MBA lead to neither of those systems having functional Continuity features once again (mostly anyway; some of them, like Air Drop, work, but the Watch Unlock and Universal Control are back to being useless).
 
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