Series 4 no longer unlocking Mac (mini 2018)

[pinkoos]

There's a long thread over in the Mac mini forum about many people having Bluetooth issues (myself included).

And, it seems that one of the issues may be that my Series 4 will only unlock my Mac mini maybe 1 out of 10 times on average.

Everything is running the latest OS and I've rebooted the watch and Mac multiple times (to troubleshoot this problem or another problem or just during the course of my normal usage), but that doesn't seem to solve the problem.

And, I've double checked the pref pane in Settings to make sure that I've set the watch to unlock the Mac. I've even unchecked it, rebooted and then checked it back on again, but with no real luck.

Any ideas?

 

[Shirasaki]

Speaking of unlock, my MacID (or Unlox) works great sometimes and does not work at all other times.
I would assume this is a combination of chip selection and engineering which causes such poor Bluetooth performance.

 

[pinkoos]

So it seems that my Logitech trackball receiver thingy (plugged into the Mac mini) was interfering with the Apple Watch unlocking the mini. I went back to my Magic Trackpad and removed the receiver thingy and my watch has magically starting unlocking the Mac again.

 

[Fleetboy]

All of a sudden my series 4 stopped unlocking my iMAC - but only for the first startup each morning. That was for a week or two, and now it appears to be working fine. Never had any issues prior to this event.

 

[Shirasaki]

So it seems that my Logitech trackball receiver thingy (plugged into the Mac mini) was interfering with the Apple Watch unlocking the mini. I went back to my Magic Trackpad and removed the receiver thingy and my watch has magically starting unlocking the Mac again.

Hmm. Sounds like Apple Watch uses Bluetooth to unlock Mac, just like MacID. Theoretically, there is no need for 2FA. But oh well.

 

[ZEEN0j]

I’ve noticed my watch stops unlocking my iMac after other people start signing in and jumping between profiles. If I boot it up and only sign into my profile it will work every time.

 

[MisterSavage]

I usually hit the shift key to unlock and I've noticed lately that it's often prompting me for the password instead of unlocking with my Apple Watch even though it says it's going to do just that initially.

 

[Shanghaichica]

This feature has always been hit and miss with all the previous generations of Apple watch I've owned (0, 3). I had it working quite well with my series 3 for a while, then I upgraded to the series 4 a few weeks ago and I've not gotten it to work yet. I don't know if it is the update to MacOS or the watch OS update.

 

[shmob]

I literally had this working FLAWLESSLY with my custom build hackintosh. For months. I decided to sell it, as I wanted a real mac again, so I got the Mac mini 2018. Now, my Apple Watch 4 never unlocks it. Ever. I tried all the things, unpairing, repairing, signing in/out of iCloud, updating all the software, waiting for the next software. This makes no sense and it is driving me mad.

 

[mofunk]

Interesting. I don't have a Mini but I have no problems with my Series 0 and 4 opening my MacBook. Even when my Series 0 has been turned off for weeks.

You could try contacting Apple and have them reset your iCloud account.

 

[shmob]

BTW clearly this had to do with the Mac mini 2018 Bluetooth issues. I didn’t know it was a known thing but I recently read about it. I now have an M1 MacBook Pro and zero issues.