Apple Watch Unlock Option Disappearing / Not Functioning

mixture

Sorry to hear you're still having trouble with this.

Why does the Mac unlock itself with the Watch work every time, but not 1Password?

Although I'm not familiar with the inner workings of macOS, I do know that unlocking 1Password requires the use of your Mac's Secure Enclave chip, whereas unlocking your Mac doesn't. That means that although these two actions of using your Apple Watch to unlock something look very similar, they're being handled very differently by macOS. Unlocking your Mac when it's asleep or in screen saver isn't decryption, it's access control. Unlocking 1Password, however, is always a decryption task which needs a decryption key stored in the Secure Enclave.

We also have to keep in mind that 1Password can't do any detection of your Apple Watch. That's all down to macOS, and it has to report whether there's an Apple Watch connected or not each time 1Password asks. Any and all use of biometrics (which includes Apple Watch in this case) must be co-ordinated by macOS and the Secure Enclave.

There's a parallel here with Touch ID. If you have a Touch ID-enabled Mac attached to an external display, keyboard, and mouse, you won't be prompted to use Touch ID to unlock 1Password if the lid is closed. This isn't because 1Password knows the lid is closed (and that therefore, the Touch ID sensor is unavailable). It's because macOS knows, and responds to 1Password with a "biometrics not available"-type message when 1Password asks if it's available. In those cases, 1Password will fall back to asking for your account password to unlock.

From what we know so far, it seems like macOS isn't always reporting the Apple Watch's availability to 1Password accurately, which manifests itself as if 1Password seemingly not working as you'd expect, even though 1Password has no way of knowing whether your Apple Watch is out of range, switched off, or if it had been unpaired from the Mac, or is unavailable for some other reason. Because of the Mac's security architecture, 1Password has to take what macOS says as the truth, since it has no way to verify otherwise, and if that "upstream" information isn't accurate, 1Password will believe it.

We're hopeful that Apple can get to the bottom of why this is happening and remediate it so that apps like 1Password, or any others that unlock with Apple Watch, won't face this problem in the long term.