Apple Watch unlocking Mac not working?

If you're an Apple Watch owner and a Mac user, there's a nifty feature that allows your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac automatically. This makes it convenient especially if you're in an office setting and you're constantly in and out of your desk.

To enable this feature, just go to "System Preferences" and then "Security & Privacy". There, you should be able to see under the General tab the option "Allow Your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac". Check it, and you should be done.

To lock your machine when you're leaving your desk, just press and hold down "control" + "shift" and the "power" button. When you're back, make sure you're wearing your watch and it's unlocked, just tap on the mouse pad or any key on the keyboard and your Mac should automatically unlock.

If you're using a company issued Mac, they may put in place security policies that requires you to change your password every so often. Note that once the Mac password is changed, it will mess up this Apple Watch unlock feature causing the Auto Unlock with Apple Watch to stop working. To fix this, you need to head over to "Keychain Access" (Just hit command + space bar to bring up Spotlight and type in "Keychain Access"). Then follow these steps:

1. Click “login in” the Keychains list.
2. Choose Edit > Change Password for Keychain “login.”
3. If the keychain is locked, enter the previous user password for the computer, then click OK.
   If you entered the correct password, a new window appears.
4. Enter the previous user password again in the Current Password field.
5. Enter your new user password in the New Password field.
6. Reenter the new user password in the Verify field, then click OK.  

You can learn more about it here: https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/keychain-access/if-you-need-to-update-your-keychain-password-kyca2429/mac

Every so often, you may encounter that the Change Password for Keychain "login" greyed out. If this happens, you may have to manually fix this using Terminal. To access terminal, use Spotlight Search (command + space bar) and type "terminal". Terminal.app will appear. Select that.
Then in the terminal prompt and type in "security set-keychain-password" (Without the ""). It will then prompt for Old Password and then the New Password twice. Key those in accordingly. Then head back to System Preferences > Security & Privacy, and enable the Apple Watch unlock option again.

Hope this helps.

Hard disk recovery solutions (Windows)

I've been having some issues with my NTFS drive, in particular a 3.5" Western Digital 2TB which I used as a boot disk with Windows 10. The hard drive failed for no reason one day, and this I found out after Windows refused to boot. Since then, I took it out to try to recover whatever data I can. Windows can't detect the NTFS partition and instead label it as RAW. I've tried using CHKDSK but it will stop after scanning the drive for a while.

Here are some of the tools which I used. As far as success rates go, I have yet to have any positive outcomes with these tools. I'm listing these here for anyone who is willing to try them out. You can let me know in your comments which of these worked better for you.

1. Wondershare RecoverIT (7.1.3)
Their free version allows you to recover up to 100MB, useful if you just need to retrieve a few important documents. Beyond that, you'll have to pay for the full version. This software managed to list down the files and folder in the TreeView, however for some reason, after leaving it to scan after a long while (few hours), the Tree View disappears and I'm just left with raw files without their names. I could not proceed with the recovery because I did not what these files are.

2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free 12.0
According to their website, they said you can recover up to 2GB for free. I installed it, and scanned it. It listed a few files. When I tried to recover it, it said I needed to purchase the full version. Obviously I did not proceed with the purchase as it had trouble scanning and listing the files as well for me.

3. MiniTool® Power Data Recovery V8
 The free version allows you to recover up to 1GB. Again with all the other solutions, the software froze before the scanning could complete.

4. TestDisk
This requires the user to know how to use the command prompt as there isn't a GUI version. It seemed promising at first but after leaving it to scan for a few hours, I encountered an error and didn't bother to proceed. The good thing about this solution is that is freeware, although you can still donate if you find it useful.


At this juncture, I'm pretty much giving up on recovering my hard disk. This article serves more of a bookmark for me should I encounter another problem hard disk, and hopefully will have better luck with any of the solutions above.