Apple Watch won't unlock MacBook Pro
Up until yesterday, my MacBook Pro worked just fine with my Apple Watch – I walk up, touch the keyboard or trackpad, Mac unlocks and I get to work. No worries! Yesterday something changed and now my watch won’t unlock my laptop.
I’ve tried everything in the Apple Support post, including repairing my phone/watch, re-establishing two-factor authentication (2FA), and rebooting my laptop, iPhone, and watch. All to no avail. I tried the @Morwen suggestion with Messages because there was a gap in my message history, but that didn't do it.
When I try to enable my watch, I get the error message shown below (albeit after about 6 or 7 minutes later, not quickly like the gif image). My watch, iPhone, and MacBook are all signed in and communicating with Apple.
The only thing I can think of that might play into this is that I was setting up a personal VPN on my home router last night, but I’ve turned that off as part of my troubleshooting (and couldn’t replicate the issue).
Digging a little further, I found this message (repeatedly since yesterday) in my Console logs. It looks like I have two permissions conflicting, but I can't tell which is which, nor where to go to change one of them…
Oct 21 02:17:54 Johns-MBP
com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice[790]: objc[790]: Class
AWDSecurityPrefAutoUnlockSetup is implemented in both
/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Security.prefPane/Contents/XPCServices/com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice
(0x10d6018e0) and
/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Security.prefPane/Contents/MacOS/Security
(0x10fd0b210). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
Environment includes:
- 2017 15" MacBook Pro with Mojave (updated)
- Apple Watch Series 3 with Cellular (updated)
Best Answer
I had a similar issue when I updated to Mojave. These steps solved my problem:
~/Library/Preferencescom.apple.bluetooth.plistAllow your Apple Watch to unlock your Macis off, check the box to turn it on