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Unlock with Apple Watch Questions
- Thread starter Brammy
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I have the option in settings/security. I check the box and it says 'turning on' and nothing ever happens. I lock, walk away, come back, etc. The box unchecks itself while it is saying turning on and if I check it again it unchecks a second later.
I have rebooted mac, watch and phone. MBP is 2015 retna.
One thing to note - my lid is shut in all this testing. I use two thunderbolt to display ports to drive two monitors and have the MBP to not sleep on lid closed if connected to power. USB apple keyboard, apple mouse.
I have rebooted mac, watch and phone. MBP is 2015 retna.
One thing to note - my lid is shut in all this testing. I use two thunderbolt to display ports to drive two monitors and have the MBP to not sleep on lid closed if connected to power. USB apple keyboard, apple mouse.
Weird how these things vary! Mine has been 100% reliable when watch has direct line of sight to laptop since b5, and unlocking fast enough to not frustrate unlike b2/3. The only time it failed was when my watch was underneath tabletop level during unlock, where it complained the wireless signal was too weak to unlock.
The watch has a REALLY weak bluetooth radio. (for a demonstration, put on a pair of bluetooth headphones, paired to the watch and put your arm behind your back - chances are you'll get a signal drop). But, for purposes of the unlocking feature, this is ideal - you want to be arm's length from the system when it unlocks.
The strength of the BT radio doesn't really matter, as they use wifi-transmission time to determine distance to allow unlock, after initial BT presense detection, from what I understood.
Hmm. There's definitely something there on the wifi stack for sure (which I'm pretty sure why the 2012 mini wasn't on the list, but the 2014 mini was).
Proximity would be easy by the signal strength of the BT signal coming from the watch (which would also explain why they didn't enable this with the iPhone - the signal is too strong).
I'm guessing that they didn't actually publish how they have it working two-fold:
1) Less info for the hackers to try to spoof it
2) Less info for the people with older mac's who want to make it work (and not upgrade)
Signal strength along is not good enough, as signal strength can be boosted/cheater, transmission time cannot be shortened, much like the various attacks on smart radio car unlock keys around.
The signal strength of the Apple Watch is a known quantity. They're also using their wifi connections to be authenticated with Apple's infrastructure for this, and I'm sure also a direct handshake. How are you going to boost the BT signal strength in your Apple Watch?
. The reason this will be a lot more secure than any car fob could be is the connection back to the cloud that will broker the session keys as well as ensuring both clients have their stored keys from being authorized under your account.
With my MacBook my wrist / watch is directly beside the laptop, maybe 6"-8" from watch BT antenna to laptop BT antenna.
In DP3 it was everytime it worked.
With 2013 Mac Pro it worked everytime IF my watch was within about 3' from the computer. I have the MP sitting normally about 3'6" away and outside 3' it never worked, inside 3', 100%.
In DP4/5 I've dropped to probably 35-40% of the time it unlocks.
I haven't test with my 2015 iMac where the watch would be about 2' from antenna to antenna. Maybe something to try this weekend.
But yeah, very strange how it varies but, beta life.
I've read for hardware required for auto unlock is bt4.0 LE AND WIFI AC I have a
iPhone 6 iOS 10beta 3
Apple Watch watchOS 3 beta 3
MacBook pro13 late 2011 replaced card supporting bt4.0 but NOT wifi ac only a/b/g/n
Infact whit cat work handoff (2fa enabled) but auto unlock is not available, must find an airport that supporting wifi ac too
iPhone 6 iOS 10beta 3
Apple Watch watchOS 3 beta 3
MacBook pro13 late 2011 replaced card supporting bt4.0 but NOT wifi ac only a/b/g/n
Infact whit cat work handoff (2fa enabled) but auto unlock is not available, must find an airport that supporting wifi ac too
@AirDark - I just checked the compatibility matrix on Quickertek's site - looks like your MBP isn't on their list (might not be a bad idea to mail them to see if you can't get one that fits?)
I was able to use their mCard 2 working in my early 2008 17" MBP (4,1) and it seems I have everything working now. Getting 585Mb connected to my ASUS router and the watch unlocking is working (though it seemed to quit previously...wondering if that wasn't some of the other tinkering I was doing with my kexts though).
I was able to use their mCard 2 working in my early 2008 17" MBP (4,1) and it seems I have everything working now. Getting 585Mb connected to my ASUS router and the watch unlocking is working (though it seemed to quit previously...wondering if that wasn't some of the other tinkering I was doing with my kexts though).
I've read for hardware required for auto unlock is bt4.0 LE AND WIFI AC I have a
iPhone 6 iOS 10beta 3
Apple Watch watchOS 3 beta 3
MacBook pro13 late 2011 replaced card supporting bt4.0 but NOT wifi ac only a/b/g/n
Infact whit cat work handoff (2fa enabled) but auto unlock is not available, must find an airport that supporting wifi ac too
Are we sure this will only work on WiFi AC? That will really suck. I have a great N network that I don't plan on upgrading soon.
Actually, the watch doesn't support AC (b/g/n 2.4GHz). It must be a feature that's included in the AC spec that Apple's using that isn't in the prior 802.11 specs.
So you're saying it's been tested and confirmed via the betas that the watch unlock feature must use an AC access point?
No, I'm suggesting that there's a feature in the 802.11AC spec or the new wifi cards that Apple is using for this functionality. Possibly for a secure handshake directly with the watch. When you're running in 802.11n mode the unlocking still works, so it can't be specifically the AC protocol itself, but something in the feature set of the new cards.
Mind you, does anyone have a BLE 4.x system that only supports 802.11b/g/n to verify?
If we added BLE 4.0 support to a b/g/n system, it would be interesting if you could get all of the Sierra continuity features (including unlocking) working. Heh...I'm not doing that to my 2012 Mac mini until Sierra goes gold. Hi to all, so, the uCard4 is same that form as airport card standard, then is compatible with my mbp late 2011, now I have upgrade with airport btLE4, and with CAT sierra's continuity functions works but not auto unlock, fishersd, you have a mbp 2012 retina or not?
Ps the my mac see the Apple Watch when I open a mail in ⌚️ and appear in left side dock an icon of mail and ⌚️.... but isn't unlockable with ⌚️
Ps the my mac see the Apple Watch when I open a mail in ⌚️ and appear in left side dock an icon of mail and ⌚️.... but isn't unlockable with ⌚️
Scroll up (posting #62) - I have a 2008 17" MBP.Hi to all, so, the uCard4 is same that form as airport card standard, then is compatible with my mbp late 2011, now I have upgrade with airport btLE4, and with CAT sierra's continuity functions works but not auto unlock, fishersd, you have a mbp 2012 retina or not?
Ps the my mac see the Apple Watch when I open a mail in ⌚️ and appear in left side dock an icon of mail and ⌚️.... but isn't unlockable with ⌚️
CAT didn't entirely like my current setup - I ended up uninstalling what it had done.
Had to get kexts from another Sierra install as System Report was complaining that my IOBluetoothFamily.kext had a signing error. (So CAT had some issues).
So, you have BLE 4.x, do you also have 802.11 AC or just b/g/n?
Find my Mac also needs to be enabled. (and I'm pretty sure someone said Back to my Mac needs to be disabled).
Yep, why wouldn't it? I replaced the AirPort Extreme card with the mCard 2 that has one of the Broadcom chipsets Apple uses and supports BLE 4.0 and 802.11AC.
Oh....and just to see if the WAP/Router is actually required, I pulled the power from my WAP, walked over to the MBP and unlocked it with the watch. (now, I'm sure there's a timeout feature in there...after x minutes without a cloud connection, you won't be able to do that), but it goes to show that connectivity to the wifi network isn't required for the feature to work. (likely just to keep your shared keys fresh)
This is what worked for me:
1. Switched handoff off/on on both MacBook and iPhone
2. Shut down each device and leave them all off for 5 or so minutes
3. Power each one back up (iPhone, watch and then Mac)
4. Verify that handoff works on each device. This may take a few minutes after restart but once you see handoff working from the watch and phone to your Mac, put the Mac to sleep and try waking it up.
Just tried it twice after typing this and it seems to be working....
1. Switched handoff off/on on both MacBook and iPhone
2. Shut down each device and leave them all off for 5 or so minutes
3. Power each one back up (iPhone, watch and then Mac)
4. Verify that handoff works on each device. This may take a few minutes after restart but once you see handoff working from the watch and phone to your Mac, put the Mac to sleep and try waking it up.
Just tried it twice after typing this and it seems to be working....
Since the last few betas Auto Unlock stopped working. Today I noticed that it actually works, if I turn bluetooth off from the iPhone and then try. This causes the Watch to connect over WiFi instead of bluetooth (green cloud icon in Control Center), and now the Mac finds the Watch.
If bluetooth is ON on the iPhone, auto unlock fails and console gives this message: sharingd Client ack'd did fail with error: Error Domain=SFAutoUnlockErrorDomain Code=131 "Apple Watch Not Found"
Just reported this to Apple. I wonder if this trick helps others, and if there's any workaround for it.
If bluetooth is ON on the iPhone, auto unlock fails and console gives this message: sharingd Client ack'd did fail with error: Error Domain=SFAutoUnlockErrorDomain Code=131 "Apple Watch Not Found"
Just reported this to Apple. I wonder if this trick helps others, and if there's any workaround for it.
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Well, that's certainly an interesting one!
You are on the latest beta's for both the watch and iPhone, yes? Which Mac do you have? (and it's running the latest beta too, right?)
Wonder if you're hitting a 2.4G/5G issue with wifi with the iPhone/Watch. Do both of your wifi networks have the same SSID? (seen a race condition where it sometimes messes up the Watch's wifi if the naming is different and the iPhone is connected to the 5GHz band). Best if they're named the same so both devices auto-negotiate and the watch isn't looking for a network it can't connect to.