Has anyone else had issues using unlock with Apple Watch on Big Sur?
My Mac tries for a few seconds to unlock using the watch, fails and then I have to use touch ID or insert my password. The fact that the Mac is trying indicates that it is connecting to the Apple Watch but failing for some reason.
Coincidently, yesterday I had to re-pair my Apple Watch to get the unlock with watch to work with the 1Password update. So I have re-paired it recently.
Mine had been doing that intermittently for months. Even a clean install of Catalina didn’t help. It occasionally prompts me to turn on the feature, but I no longer try.
I had issues after watchOS 7.
Googling gave me this solution which has worked for me fixed it on iMac and MacBook Pro, including after upgrade to Big Sur
Steps (follow at your own discretion)
Open “Keychain Access”
In “View”, enable “Show Invisible Items”
Search for “Auto Unlock”
You should see a whole bunch of application passwords for “Auto Unlock: XXXX’s …”
Select all records and delete (this will reset/disable auto unlock on other Macs if you use multiple Macs)
Whilst still in “Keychain Access”, search for “AutoUnlock” (no space)
There should be 4 entries for “tlk” “tlk-nonsync” “classA” “classC”
Select 4 records and delete (don’t worry if they re-appear, the system repairs this automatically)
Open “Finder” and navigate to “~/Library/Sharing/AutoUnlock”
There should be two files “ltk.plist” and “pairing-records.plist”
Delete both files
Open “System Preferences” and try enabling auto unlock. You may need to enable it twice, the first attempt will fail.
Unlock from Watch had been intermittent for me on both Mojave and Catalina. Might well be going to BIg Sur later this week - but I don’t expect this to change.
I had a similar problem with Catalina. It was eventually solved by ticking and unticking the permission in preferences. I am not sure if I had to do it in Safe Mode. I had support calls and the tech seemed to know the problem but didn’t know why what we did was fixing it. I use my apple watch for haptic alerts, opening mac, timers, time and nothing else! so it mattered to me that it worked right. I think the procedure was similar to what @TheMarty says above. I can’t remember the exact process. I think I had to log out and make sure stuff was ticked properly too.
Please note, the day before I had re-paired my Apple Watch with the Mac so I think this definitely helped. But really I just reset my phone, watch and Mac and it started working.