According to sources familiar with the development of macOS, Apple is allegedly working on expanding Apple Watch authentication in macOS 10.15 so that you’ll be able to authenticate other operations on your computer beyond simply unlocking the system.

The next major revision to Apple’s desktop operating system will bring enhancements to the Apple Watch authentication feature so that you could authorize other operations on the computer beyond simply unlocking the system.

Guilherme Rambo, writing at 9to5Mac:

According to sources familiar with the development of macOS, the next major version of the operating system will allow users to authenticate other operations on the Mac beyond just unlocking the machine with their watch.

If true, that’s going to be an awesome feature addition for macOS 10.15.

This will let people with older Macs without biometric features like Touch ID take advantage of their watch to do more than just log in to their macOS account.

This is how you enable auto-unlocking in macOS via Apple Watch

The ability to unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch—Apple’s calling this Auto Unlock—was introduced in macOS Sierra 10.12 two years ago.

TUTORIAL: How to unlock your Mac with Apple Watch

Currently, Apple Watch wearers can unlock their computer and authenticate Apple Pay purchases with a double-click of the watch’s Side button (from a security standpoint, the watch knows when it’s being worn and it also must be secured with a passcode)

It’s unclear the extent of operations that will be supported, but it’s possible that all operations that can currently be authenticated with Touch ID will also be accessible via the Apple Watch mechanism.

Sounds logical to me.

It’s also likely that there will be a user interface on watchOS to authorize the process, similar to the current Apple Pay confirmation, since doing everything without user input would not be as secure.

By comparison, Touch ID-outfitted Macs like the MacBook Pro line and the latest MacBook Air can use their fingerprint instead of their password to unlock the computer, authorize Apple Pay purchases, autofill usernames and passwords, confirm sensitive changes in System Preferences and authenticate with sudo in Terminal.

The Cupertino tech giant will announce unveil the next major version of macOS along with other major OS updates during the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 3.