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Unlock With Apple Watch Not Working In Catalina

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I'm having exactly the same issue on 10.14.6. "Unlocking with Apple Watch" appears for a split second then disappears. I've tried everything I can think of, everything suggested on this thread. It was working before the 10.14 upgrade.
 
So today I updated my OS to 15.3 and opencore it broke the watch. So I updated the watch my phone still not luck. Then I did a reinstall of the os Downloaded from the App Store. Once it was done I was able to unlock the system with the watch again. Even with my 2018 Mac mini my watch is finicky.

@scottkendall just to clarify your answer, after updating to 10.15.3 you reinstalled macOS 10.15.3 on top of the existing installation and that caused unlock with apple watch to start working again? Can you also confirm you had the same exact symptoms where all other handoff/continuity features work including approve with Apple Watch (approve admin dialogs by double tapping the watch button) but unlock with Apple Watch shows a spinner at the login prompt and them times out and asks for the password?

I haven't had it working in my Catalina system since upgrading from Mojave. It seems weird that an in-place install of macOS would fix this issue, but I'm willing to try if you can confirm you had the same symptoms.
 
@scottkendall just to clarify your answer, after updating to 10.15.3 you reinstalled macOS 10.15.3 on top of the existing installation and that caused unlock with apple watch to start working again? Can you also confirm you had the same exact symptoms where all other handoff/continuity features work including approve with Apple Watch (approve admin dialogs by double tapping the watch button) but unlock with Apple Watch shows a spinner at the login prompt and them times out and asks for the password?

I haven't had it working in my Catalina system since upgrading from Mojave. It seems weird that an in-place install of macOS would fix this issue, but I'm willing to try if you can confirm you had the same symptoms.

I do not wear the watch often enough to know if it unlocks everything it should. However, yes handoff/continuity features were working, I never tried the tapping of watch buttons. But it showed a spinner at the login prompt and then timed out. Before I updated to 10.15.3 it worked and after I updated it did not. My steps were to make sure the Watch had the most up to date software version, also my phone just in case. Then I reinstalled 15.3 over the top of 15.3 set the watch up again and it worked. I am not sure about Native Nvram is the issues as @ricker59 says but I can tell you I do have working native Nvram.

No I do not use EmuVariableUefi or RC scripts... However, I would imagine your board supports Native Nvram and does not require them either.
 
No I do not use EmuVariableUefi or RC scripts... However, I would imagine your board supports Native Nvram and does not require them either.

I don't believe that's the case for my board. I cannot set nvram variables and have them persisted after boot without using EmuVariableUefi.

Another question about your configuration. Does anyone else here have FileVault2 enabled? I'm wondering if this is related to using FileVault2 disk encryption.
 
I don't believe that's the case for my board. I cannot set nvram variables and have them persisted after boot without using EmuVariableUefi.

Another question about your configuration. Does anyone else here have FileVault2 enabled? I'm wondering if this is related to using FileVault2 disk encryption.

Maybe that is because you do not use a memory fix that has native Nvram support.
 
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