MacID is an awesome app for unlocking a Mac with your Apple Watch

MacID bills itself as an iOS app that brings Touch ID to the Mac, via Apple’s iPhone. But another, more little-know feature of the $3.99 application is that users of MacID can also set the software to unlock their computer through tapping a connected Apple Watch. As you might expect, I find this far more appealing.

Configuring the app is simple enough: you of course need both the Mac software and its iOS counterpart, which in turn pushes the Watch app onto your wrist. On both the Mac and iOS sides, you also need a device capable of supporting Bluetooth LE and running at least OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. Because it uses Bluetooth LE, the app shouldn’t take a serious bite of your devices’ battery lives. The connection range is also larger, too.

After selecting your iPhone from MacID’s setup screen you should be good to go. With the Watch app, it’s possible to simply tap on your smart watch in order to unlock a Mac at the password prompt screen. After recognizing the tap, MacID will then fill in the password and load up your desktop. It’s all wonderfully twenty-first century.

Apple Watch wearers should also receive a buzz at the wrist when their Mac’s password screen loads up. In this way you can simply raise your wrist, tap to authenticate, and sit at your now-unlocked MacBook without touching a single key. An Apple Watch complication also provides quick access to MacID, along with a badge count showing the number of connected Macs.

There’s been much talk about the Apple Watch’s potential as a “digital token,” and though we’re a way off yet, MacID brings a flavor of this to the first-generation device. Sure, at times the process is a little buggy, but this is nevertheless an interesting app that adds a smart, so-far-unexplored feature to the Apple Watch.

Here’s hoping we see similar things in the years to come. Digital car keys, anyone?