Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch Error Message, How-To Fix

Wearable technology is truly revolutionary for it offers such convenience to its users. And the Apple Watch is no different. The best part–if you also own a Mac, unlock it with your Watch–how convenient is that?

Provide your login credentials when you turn on your Mac, and after that, the watch does it every time you wake up your Mac.

All you need is to wear the watch and be near your machine. But like life, problems appear–and for the Apple Watch and Macs, the error unable to communicate with your Apple Watch is all too witnessed.

Some users have faced an error when trying to set up this feature on their watch.

The error message “Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch” keeps appearing when you try to set up my Watch to unlock your Mac or MacBook. Although there is no sure answer as to what causes this error, we have some suggestions and solutions that fix the problem.

Contents

0.1 Related reading

1 Meet the conditions to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch
2 Fixes for Macbook unable to unlock or communicate with your Apple Watch

Meet the conditions to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch

There are certain things you need to ensure before setting up your Autolock feature for Mac.

You Apple ID is using two-factor authentication
Both WiFi and Bluetooth on Mac are turned on
Same Apple ID is used on both the Mac and Watch
Apple Watch has a passcode
On your Mac, check “Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac” This option is located in System & Preferences. Click Apple Menu & then System Preferences and then finally Security & Privacy.

If all of these conditions are met and your Watch is near the Mac, you should not have any problem.

Double-check that you use the same WiFi network for all these devices i.e. Mac, iPhone, and the watch. Using different WiFi networks results in this error.

Fixes for Macbook unable to unlock or communicate with your Apple Watch

Re-enable Handoff

Some users who face this problem found relief with the handoff option. Disabling it and then enabling it again does the trick.

On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Handoff.
Toggle it off then wait momentarily and toggle it back on again.
Then go to the Apple Watch App > General > Enable Handoff and perform that same toggle off and on.

Finally, check also that Handoff is enabled on your Mac: System Preferences > General > Check the option for Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices

iPhone Unlock

Disabling the option of using the iPhone to unlock the watch can also fix the problem of not being able to connect with Mac.

To do that, launch the Watch App on your iPhone.
Then go into Passcode > Switch off Unlock with iPhone.

FileVault

Perhaps FileVault is causing the problem from your Mac’s side of things.

Try to disable FileVault and see if that does the trick

Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault and turn it off.
Turning FileVault off means that your Mac’s data is not encrypted automatically, so proceed with caution.

Check Your WiFi

Readers with similar problems but found that their iPhone (paired with their watch) was on a different WiFi network than their MacBook. If you have several networks available, use a range extender, or have a multiple band router, check that you connect to the same network on all devices and Macs.

Look at Keychain

Disable and then Enable iCloud Keychain on your paired iPhone

Go to Settings > Apple ID (for older macOS tap iCloud) and scroll down to Keychain.
Tap it and toggle iCloud Keychain off and then back on.
It asks if you want to turn Safari AutoFill off for passwords, select Keep on My iPhone.

Make sure that your Keychain login and user account login passwords MATCH

They HAVE to match for this feature to work. To fix this, open Spotlight, search for “Keychain Access” open the app. Right-click on “login” on the left under the big padlock icon and then select the “Change Password” option and set it as the same password as your user account.

Make sure the password you enter is secure.

Your Mac lets you know when it isn’t secure enough. Once a new password is saved, go to System Preferences > User Accounts and Groups and change your user account’s password to match the one you just entered in Keychain Access.

Latest watchOS Upgrade

Ensure that you have the latest OS installed both on your Mac and Watch. Check your watchOS version by launching the Watch App on your iPhone then tap on My Watch and going into Settings > General > Software Update.

Auto Unlock is a very cool feature of the watch that makes it useful with your Mac also. You can unlock your Mac with very little effort as the watch does it for you. One of these solutions should eliminate the problem and enable you to use this feature.

Reader Tips

This worked for me: unpairing my apple watch, removing my apple watch from my Apple ID account, repairing my watch with my iPhone, restarting everything (Mac, Watch, iPhone), and enabling auto-unlock
Putting my phone into Airplane mode, and then connecting the watch through settings on the Mac was what finally worked for me. After I connected the watch I took the phone out of Airplane mode and everything was still working as expected
Make sure keychain is ON in your iCloud settings on your iPhone. As soon as I turned it back on, everything worked
Log out of iCloud on both iPhone and MacBook and then log back in from Apple watch app
Go to your Mac’s Bluetooth settings and then pair your iPhone to your Mac
Just toggling Airplane Mode on my watch multiple times seems to have solved it for me
Forget your WiFi on the iPhone and Mac. Then disable Bluetooth on the iPhone. Join the same WiFi network on the iPhone and Mac. And finally, turn on Bluetooth back on the phone

Show 8 Comments

Malcolm says

March 20, 2020 at 3:01 PM

Unpairing watch, re-pairing and reenabling via mac->system preferences->general tab worked for me.

Will says

July 8, 2019 at 9:06 PM

Great! Top-notch article. This lead me to the solution. Much appreciated.

Gucci gang says

October 19, 2018 at 4:13 PM

disabling the iPhone unlock worked for me! Goddamn love my apple shit!

Neal says

May 22, 2018 at 2:49 PM

Thanks. I had tried everything suggested, except unpairing. The signing out of iCloud and signing back in on both the Mac and iPhone worked for me.

Zoran says

December 3, 2017 at 2:15 PM

Thanks for the great article, i was able to resolve it by signing out my Mac and iPhone from iCloud and signing back in.

thanks!

adeel says

October 22, 2017 at 7:51 AM

Thanks a lot ! Fire vault fix helped 🙂

Ola says

September 20, 2017 at 12:40 AM

It is not necessary to be on the same wifi (does the watch have wifi?), I had the problem, but it was solved by restarting the mac.

Nirendra Nagar says

August 19, 2017 at 8:16 AM

Thank you. iPhone unlock fix helped.

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Your Mac was unable to communicate with your Apple Watch Error Message, How-To Fix

Related reading

Meet the conditions to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch

There are certain things you need to ensure before setting up your Autolock feature for Mac.