Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Inconsistent unlocking of MacBook

bbates123

bbates123

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 2, 2010
867
760
My watch unlocks my Mac most of the time but not all of the time and I haven't found any consistent pattern to why it works sometimes and other times not. I'm running the latest Mac OS and Watch OS. Has anybody gotten their unlocking to work consistently all of the time?
 
The only times I have noticed mine doesn't work, is when I take the watch off the charger and forget to unlock the watch, or right after a power on or reboot.
 
The watch and the MacBook also have to be on the same wireless network. Sometime when I take my MacBook Pro out into the world it's not connected to wifi. The Watch won't unlock it in those cases.
 
  • Like
Reactions: beartjie and SDColorado
My watch is great at unlocking my MBP but less good with my iMac -- if the iMac has been asleep for a while, I usually have to wake it up, put it back to sleep, then wake it up again for the watch to unlock it. After that it's fine.
 
Watch and MBP are on the same wireless network. Like I said, it usually works but every once in a while I get the spinning wheel saying MacBook is being unlocked by my watch then after a few seconds I get the prompt for the password. Then if I later close the lid and come back in a few minutes it unlocks just fine. It seems pretty random. I would say 80% of the time it unlocks just fine, 20% I get the spinning wheel then I have to unlock it manually.
 
bbates123 said:
Watch and MBP are on the same wireless network. Like I said, it usually works but every once in a while I get the spinning wheel saying MacBook is being unlocked by my watch then after a few seconds I get the prompt for the password. Then if I later close the lid and come back in a few minutes it unlocks just fine. It seems pretty random. I would say 80% of the time it unlocks just fine, 20% I get the spinning wheel then I have to unlock it manually.
Click to expand...

Sounds like its timing out for some reason. Not sure why that would be though.
 
bbates123 said:
Watch and MBP are on the same wireless network. Like I said, it usually works but every once in a while I get the spinning wheel saying MacBook is being unlocked by my watch then after a few seconds I get the prompt for the password. Then if I later close the lid and come back in a few minutes it unlocks just fine. It seems pretty random. I would say 80% of the time it unlocks just fine, 20% I get the spinning wheel then I have to unlock it manually.
Click to expand...
Same experience here. About 20 percent of the time, I'll get the spinning wheel and the watch will fail to unlock my Macbook.
 
I really hope Apples comes out with a non touchbar MacBook in 2017 that includes Touch ID, then I'd just use that all the time. I doubt that will happen tough.
 
I had the first incident of failing to unlock, in the past two weeks, last night. It is really very infrequent when it fails to work, between heavy use of both a MBP and an iMac.

I wonder why it seems to work well for some and not for others?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back