You can do a heck of a lot of things with your Apple Watch these days. I mean, the technology is incredible. When I think about what we can do with smart devices, in general, I am amazed how far technology has advanced in the last couple of years. Having the ability to control appliances from your wrist or your pocket can make your life so much simpler. But think about the technology itself. I am not going to get into how things work exactly, but the overall capability that we can do these things seems futuristic and even out of this world.
You can control your lights, your thermostat, and even various appliances. Where I’m going with this is that technology has changed in a fascinating way over the last few years, and it’s gradually making our lives both better and easier in some ways. So when I heard that you can now unlock your door with your Apple Watch, I was very intrigued. August, the popular lock maker now has an Apple Watch app that lets you control the lock using any Apple Watch. From your watch screen, you can view multiple locks or choose to control only your main lock. You can also add your August Smart Lock as a watch face shortcut (Apple Watch Complication) on your watch home screen.
To begin using the August Watch app:
- Update your August App on your iPhone to version 6.7.10 or higher and make sure your watch is running WatchOS 4 or higher
- Launch the August Apple Watch app on your watch. You may be prompted to login on your iPhone to sync your lock(s) with your watch
The new Apple Watch lock/unlock feature is available to any user who is set up as a house Owner. You can promote a house “Guest” to an Owner:
- Open the Guest List in the August app
- Tap the Guest that you would like to promote to an Owner
- Update the Access Level to Owner and save the changes
So you do have a bit of work to do before you can start using it. Like making sure that your apps are all up to date, but that’s a small price to pay for this kind of convenience. And let’s talk about that for a moment. Every day, I leave my house and I check my purse to make sure that I have my keys. They’re always there, but I’m paranoid that one day I’m going to leave my keys in my house and be locked out.
It’s these kinds of reasons that I think having the ability to unlock your house, using your Apple Watch is incredible. I, personally, feel like not having to carry keys around is incredibly liberating, but I’m a bit of a nerd, I guess. August Home says that you can add a Watch face shortcut, to make it easy to access a specific lock. Literally, all you need is your Apple Watch itself, in order to be able to unlock your door, and this is something I am excited about.