Why is Authenticator App not working with Apple Watch?

Michael Antonelli 21

I am having an issue with the Authenticator App working on my Apple Watch. I am enabling the app on my iphone then go to my watch and enable the app there. My watch then shows the message “Keep the app open on your phone and respond to any prompts.” No prompts appear on my phone to respond to. When I shut down the app on the watch and restart I am being told I am required to set up my accounts and to open the Authenticator App on my phone and the message screen described above appears and no prompts appear on my phone. I have tried rebooting both the watch and the phone. I have also removed the app from the watch and reinstalled. What am I doing wrong here?

Alfredo Revilla - Senior Freelance SWE, SWA, IAM 27,016 Reputation points

2020-11-27T17:44:50.057+00:00

Hello @Michael Antonelli , I'm reaching within the product team and will come back to you.
Scott MacLellan 21 Reputation points

2021-05-14T22:07:03.433+00:00

I’m still having this same issue after several watch updates. May of 2021. It used to work just fine.
Vish Bagathur-Natarajan 21 Reputation points

2022-06-15T21:32:41.537+00:00

Any updates on this guys? The Duo Security app works seamlessly with Apple Watch 7 which is what I have. How come this is taking so long for you guys to get it working?
Rotary Transformer 16 Reputation points

2022-08-30T14:05:25.49+00:00

Checked in 8/30/2022, the problem still exists.

6 answers

Alfredo Revilla - Senior Freelance SWE, SWA, IAM 27,016 Reputation points

2020-12-02T00:59:10.387+00:00

I'm back @Michael Antonelli , there are known connectivity issues with Apple Watch. Please refer to our FAQs for mitigation steps. There's also an Apple bug on watchOS 7 that is breaking some flows, which we're still waiting to hear back from Apple on.

Please let me know if you need more help. If the answer was helpful to you, please accept it it so that other members in the community can benefit from it.
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Chris Lemon 6 Reputation points

2021-02-16T20:41:44.207+00:00

Is this still an issue? I am having this same problem right now with regard to resetting the Authenticator app on the watch not syncing and authentication on Apple Watch hasn't been working for months now. What's going on?

jbla9028 21 Reputation points

2021-02-17T14:54:05.44+00:00

@Marco Aurélio suggestion below worked for me. I just moved from android to iphone 12 with a new apple watch. I was experiencing this issue and after removing 'app lock' on the microsoft authenticator, I can now successfully approve MFA request through the app on the watch vs the phone. Thank you @Marco Aurélio

Chris Lemon 6 Reputation points

2021-02-17T15:42:17.04+00:00

I appreciate it, but the main problem is that my passwordless accounts have disappeared off of the Watch. Is the only way to get them back on there to delete them from the phone and re-add them? Is there no syncing function?

Chris Lemon 6 Reputation points

2021-02-18T15:48:51.527+00:00

They FINALLY synced, after waiting way too long. Not a good experience.

Art Loik 1 Reputation point

2021-05-11T08:26:09.657+00:00

I have the issue with my Apple Watch, with app lock disabled and when number matching is not required... Is it a "no fix" ?

Darius-C 1 Reputation point

2022-01-19T15:49:09.127+00:00

Hello @Alfredo Revilla - Senior Freelance SWE, SWA, IAM , we would like for you to bring this to the attention of the Microsoft Authenticator product group and PMs. The solution working for most is disabling the application lock under security within Authenticator on the phone. This introduces a security concern.

The way Apple designed the Apple Watch, take Apple Pay as an example... Once the Watch is unlocked on a user's wrist, the Watch is 'trusted' to bypass authentication prompts to interact with items on the phone because it is considered secure. In the same way, if the Watch Approves or Disapproves a Microsoft Authenticator authentication challenge, even with application lock enabled within Authenticator, it should treat the Approval/Disapproval from the Watch as though the user already unlocked Authenticator for this interaction.

John Howell (AP) 16 Reputation points

2022-01-19T19:43:09.8+00:00

At some point, having the application lock enabled DID work, but the watch indicated that it must remain active util the authentication had succeeded. An acceptable delay for the added security.
However I am now ONLy able to unlock or accept prompt from the watch if the authenticator app lock feature is disabled.

Jan Andreas Knudsen 6 Reputation points

2022-04-08T07:24:18.35+00:00

Why is it taking so long for Microsoft to fix this bug? None of the other authentication apps on my Apple Watch have such blatant errors.

Evan Thomas 6 Reputation points

2022-04-19T06:25:17.56+00:00

I agree, pretty disappointing after all this time is it still so badly broken. It would be better if they just pulled it.

Jonathan Bartkowiak 31 Reputation points

2022-04-20T19:43:04.833+00:00

Any updates on this working with the "App Lock" enabled?

Jonathan Bartkowiak 31 Reputation points

2022-04-20T19:43:04.833+00:00

Any updates on this working with the "App Lock" enabled?

Jonathan Bartkowiak 31 Reputation points

2022-04-20T19:43:04.833+00:00

Any updates on this working with the "App Lock" enabled?

Josh 1 Reputation point

2022-05-06T13:12:34.197+00:00

For anyone else having this issue, I needed to setup a pin on my watch before it allowed me to sync them, otherwise it would just sit on a loading screen forever.

Evan Thomas 6 Reputation points

2022-10-25T22:12:14.253+00:00

This is so frustrating. I removed an reinstalled my personal account and it worked exactly once. New phone, only the work account transferred, add personal account which showed up in the watch but not the work account. I don't understand how people can have so little pride in the quality of their work.

Christopher Ban 5 Reputation points

2023-03-24T01:08:28.9733333+00:00

EXTREMELY disappointing

Rotary Transformer 16 Reputation points

2023-03-31T18:35:07.9766667+00:00

A great solution for a problem is to eliminate the source of the problem!
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Why is Authenticator App not working with Apple Watch?

6 answers

EXTREMELY disappointing