Unable to Activate Auto-Unlock

I mean where do you buy the card from?

purchased off eBay. Fits perfect and works great.

Apparently it can even be done with older iMacs and MacPros. I am about to try it with a 2010 iMac. They sell complete kits on eBay and other marketplaces to upgrade to a Wifi ac card (and newer bluetooth).

I had similar issue as well. All my devices were updated to latest version (developer 7 on 10.12). I would click on the checkbox to activate it and it spun and then after 5-10 minutes would give the error. I tried signing off from icloud, rebooting, even doing a fresh in stall of the OS - nothing seemed to work. So after a couple of days I was working on the laptop and casually went to try it again - and bam - it worked. So not sure why it worked then and not the times earlier. Either way it's a cool feature.

I wish in the future we'd get the ability to unlock our dekstop Mac's as well. Maybe not automatically, but once in range we can click something on the watch to unlock it.

I also found that beta 8 seemed to ***** up something in the network settings. I was able to get Unlock working again only by both:

1) Reset Network Settings on iPhone (which also resets network settings on watch).

2) Reset the bluetooth module on the Mac (Shift+Option while clicking the bluetooth menu, which will give you access to the Debug menu. Select "Reset the bluetooth module").

Hope that helps someone!

I have successfully installed Sierra on a Mac Pro (Early 2008) with a modified Wifi+BT4.0 card, and all Continuity/Handoff features work as expected, including Unlock with Apple Watch!

I have literally tried everything and nothing seems to work. I feel disappointed...

Yer I just updated to this version this morning, and I have the latest Developer build for WatchOS3, iOS10.0.1 and macOS Sierra, and for some reason the ability to unlock my mac with my watch was turned off.

I tried to turn it on and nothing.

Tried:

Resetting network settings and bluetooth - no go

Signing out and back in to iCloud - no go

Restarting mac - no go

Restarting watch - no go

Failing reinstalling macOS or resetting the watch, nothing has worked so far.

Hopefully I'll be able to get it working tomorrow as another person stated they were able to get it working a few days later.

Wish me luck!

13" MBP Early 2015 + Sierra GM

42mm stainless watch + Watch OS 3 GM

iPhone 5S + iOS 10 GM

I keep getting the error "Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch"

2FA is enabled, handoff works, with a locked watch I get the error message that I should unlock my watch and retry, so the devices do seem to communicate.

I tried pretty much everything mentioned here. Created a new user account on my mac, signed off and on to iCloud on all devices, unpaired and repaired my watch, even set it up as a new watch instead of restoring from backup. Turning handoff off and on again, disabling FileVault nothing worked for me so far.

/edit: I also reset Bluetooth on my Mac and cleared my iPhone network settings. No go.

I'll second this. I've tried everything here, rebooted everything, signed out of iCloud on everything. Nothing.

12" Macbook Sierra GM

iPhone 6+

42mm stainless watch + Watch OS 3 GM

I hit this problem too, and managed to sort it out after a fairly significant amount of screwing around and reaching dead ends.

I'm assuming what went screwy for me was that I had to enable 2FA before enabling the option, which went smoothly and authenticated my Macbook, but there's no prompt to authenticate the phone, it wasn't until I went into Settings > iCloud on my phone and waited 10 seconds or so that I was prompted to authenticate it with a code (which was then sent to my Macbook) Once I authenticated the phone I went into the settings in my watch app to check everything looked fine, and then restarted my watch (probably not necessary, but I did it anyway) and once it started back up, unlocking via the watch started working.

If you've turned on/toggled 2FA and haven't authenticated both your phone and your computer, go into the iCloud settings on each and enter the codes from the other when prompted. My guess is this problem is happening for at least some of you because you've recently turned on 2FA to use it, but haven't yet been through the 2FA song and dance on your phone, since only your Mac will have prompted you do it at the time.

Some of you seem to have taken desperate measures though, I guess you guys are out of luck until the 20th :/

I tried this and it still didn't work for me 😟

Thanks. Turning off the Hand off resolved the issue

I have a MacBook Pro late 2013 - I saw the option, clicked it. And was informed I needed to enable two factor authentication.

I did exactly that, and when I went back, the option had vanished!

What does not work.

Disabling/Enabling handoff

Logging in/out of iCloud.

Discovered that un-pairing and re-pairing the watch makes the check box appear.

Yay!

Discovered that now I get ten minutes of gear cycling before "Unable to communicate with watch"

Boo!

You're not missing out, mine stopped working again a few hours after I posted that, think we're just going to have to wait for them to iron out the kinks :/

Mine was flaky until the official macOS sierra and iOS 10 came out, then it was working brilliantly.

Then my iPhone 7 arrived, I set up my new iPhone with a backup from my previous phone and since then the auto-unlock no longer works.

I turned off "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac" and tried to turn it back on, but it gives me the "cannot connect to Apple Watch" error message.

This is very frustrating.

I had the same issue. I disabled and reenabled Two Factor authentication and that has fixed it.

Not sure if it will fix the issue for you but might be worth a shot.

1. Unpaired the watch and paired it agian.

2. Logged out of iCloud on my computer and then logged back in.

3. Turned on "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac"

4 It works now

This was exactly the problem. Thank you!

I had two logins. One for work and one for home. The work login had my work email for app store while my home login had my personal email (which is the one I use with icloud).

does not show on my conI have tried everything, and I mean ALL of the above and still nothing.

I know I followed each and every step.

Unpaired and paired teh watch.

Logged out of iCloud on my computer (and even the phone!) and then logged back in.

Nothoing. "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac" does not show at all.

I am using the lates as of today release of all OSs.

HELP! PLEASE!!!

There were 2 things that wasn't mentioned here (or anywhere else!) that resolved this problem:

1. Turn on 'Back To My Mac' in System Preferences > iCloud

2. If you have other routers in the house running as "extenders", turn them off. Just leave only your main router running.

Best regards,

Ben

Same here.

Dear Lito

I had a change of my Apple Watch because I damaged one.

I unpaired the damaged on but due to whatwever reason I had 2 devices in my Applid.

Had to delete one.

Unlocking is working now.

Had same problem. I tried everything in this trail. In the end, Unpairing and Pairing again (long wait), fixed it. Apple Watch is still syncing / installing Apps from backup. However, after ALL that trouble, it's faster to type in my long password than what it takes Apple Watch to unlock the screen on its own. Bummer. Ended up the same as third party software out there a while ago.