macOS Big Sur and watchOS 7 are cool updates with a lot of neat features. However, they do bring their share of bugs and weird issues that can be irksome. One such issue that I recently faced was that Apple Watch with watchOS 7 fails to enable automatic unlock with macOS Big Sur. I was getting errors like “unable to communicate with Apple Watch” and what not. If you’re in the same boat, fret not. Here’s how to fix Apple Watch not unlocking Mac with macOS Big Sur.
A lot of users are facing these issues, and unfortunately Apple hasn’t officially acknowledged the bug. That means we don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution that we can recommend here. However, we do have a bunch of things you can try. They worked for me, so I’m sure they will solve the problem with your Apple Watch as well.
- Check for Software Updates
- Reset Bluetooth and WiFi
- Disable Automatic Login
- Sign out of iCloud on Mac
- Reset Apple Watch
- Tweak the Keychain
1. Check for Software Updates
The first thing to do for such problems is ensuring you’re on the latest software version on both your Mac and Apple Watch. Apple may not have publicly acknowledged the problem, but is likely to ship a patch for it sometime soon. So, check for software updates and download the latest version available. Here’s how you can do that.
Go to System Preferences and click on Software Update
It will automatically check for updates and let you know if any updates are available. While you’re here, also enable ‘Automatically keep my Mac up to date’ if you haven’t already.
Go to Settings on your Watch
You can also use your iPhone to check for watchOS updates.
2. Reset Bluetooth and WiFi
A common error shown by a Mac when trying to enable automatic unlock with Apple Watch is “your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch”. This error is entirely unhelpful, and extremely irritating to see. However, resetting your wireless radios might help solve it.
Reset WiFi
Reset Bluetooth
- Open Control Center from the menu bar. Click on the Bluetooth icon to disable it.
On Your Apple Watch
- Swipe up on the watch face to open Control Center.
Now try enabling automatic unlock with Apple Watch.
You may not know about this feature, but it exists, and apparently disabling it has helped solve the problem for some users.
- Open System Preferences on your Mac, and click on Users and Groups.
macOS Big Sur has a lot of issues with things like Handoff and Sidecar. Most of these have been solved by users by signing out of iCloud on their Mac. Turns out, this has also worked for a bunch of people facing the Apple Watch error we are dealing with today.
- Click on Sign Out to log out of your iCloud account on your Mac.
This is the solution that finally worked for me, by the way, and I’m really hoping it solves the problem for you as well. Because the rest of the methods are either painstakingly long, or just too much work.
If none of the steps have worked for you, you should try resetting your Apple Watch. This means you have to unpair your Apple Watch and then set it up again with your iPhone.
This is probably less extreme than resetting your Apple Watch, but it’s also extremely time consuming, and you will have to play around with Keychain a lot. That’s why I put this as the last method on this list. If nothing has worked for you, however, here’s another thing you can try.
Note: I have not tried this particular method. However, it was mentioned on a forum and a lot of users claimed this solved the problem for them, so I’m including this here as a last resort for you guys.
- Now, search for ‘AutoUnlock‘ (without spaces this time)
- You will see four items. Select them and delete them. If they reappear, don’t worry about it. Just move on.
- Now open Finder. Use the keyboard shortcut command+shift+G to open the ‘Go to Folder’ dialog box. Navigate to “~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock“. Remember to include the tilde symbol in the path.
