Q: iOS 8 Keyboard Shortcuts won't delete.

Can someone explain:

My current backup is to iCloud only. Do I need to turn off iCloud backup, then force a backup to iTunes. Then edit the backup. Then restore from iTunes. Then turn on iCloud?

I'm confused about the relationship of the iCloud to iTunes backups and what should be backed up and restored from where/to where.

The way I see it now is:

1. Turn off sync to iCloud

2. Sync/backup to iTunes

3. Delete the keyboard/coredata folder

4. Restore from backup in iTunes, using the local iTunes (not iCloud) backup.

5. Re-check the box to sync to iCloud?

When do I delete the zombie shortcuts? After I do steps 1-5 above or before step 2?

I had the problem on both devices.  We've discovered that some people have only part of the problem and the easier fixes sometimes work.  I wasn't so lucky as were others.  In answer to your question, it doesn't seem to matter when you delete the zombie shortcuts.  Once you remove the corrupted files the issue goes away and you can add and delete your files with no worries.  So if your problem is like mine and many others, delete those corrupted files and do the restore with the clean backup and it really doesn't matter when you delete the zombie shortcuts.  If you find that they are reappearing on your iPad mini as they did on mine, then you'll need to do the same procedure on that.  You shouldn't have to do anything to your Mac at all if you have one.

Jim

thanks ibarrett, i always like hearing tips from developers, u guys make the tech world work! I did that process above, fingers crossed she works, cause man my customers are wondering why my shortcuts of i love u to my wife are coming through to them, too funny, thank god they have a good sense of humour !

Hi everyone,

I had the same issue as everyone since iphone 5 was released. I think i might have found a solution as my deleted shortcuts have not returned so far, keeping my fingers crossed, since I tried this method.

Assumptions, you have

1) multiple Apple devices sharing the same apple id.

2) iCloud turn on on all devices

Here's how we clean things up once and for all!

1) Gather all your iOS devices together

2) Restart all your devices

2) Go to Settings>General>Keyboard>Shortcuts

3) You might see different devices having different shortcuts entries or they could all be the same since they are synced through icloud.

4) To delete the unwanted shortcuts, you need to delete them on all the devices (i have 2) as fast as you could. Why?

My conclusion is, iCloud or the syncing process is not intelligent enough to know which "master" instruction to follow as there are a few devices using the same apple id and connected together. So if you have 2 devices, if you delete a shortcut from one device and not from the other, icloud could have checked all devices and automatically keep the record that has more information instead of telling the other devices to remove the entry.

5) Once you are done deleting the unwanted shortcuts, restart your devices again. Enable your data connection or wifi as they should be connected to icloud. Why? Because I noticed every time when I restart my devices, they seemed to "talk" to icloud and update whatever is on icloud with them. You would have succeeded if the updated shortcuts didn't show up the first few minutes that you have restarted. Otherwise, your unwanted shortcuts would have reappeared on your devices. Try again! Good luck!

I'll update if my unwanted shortcuts return!!! Keeping my fingers crossed!!!

Awesome!

Simple!

Works!

Thank you, everyone. I will try everything on this list.

A couple months ago my daughter put in a shortcut as a prank, and whenever I type the word "no" the ENTIRE Gettysburg Address appears. I delete the thing about 5 times a day, and it always comes back. The shortcut is so long that half the time it just restarts my phone because it can't handle all the information at one time, and I have a brand new iPhone 6. My phone is doing a manual icloud backup now. Crossing fingers.

in response to Pickinic:

Which solution are you referring to exactly with your link?

Your link contains a multitude of solutions.

Can you like copy paste the solution into this very topic?

Thanks.

And what would I do to fix it on my iMac?  [In 'System Settings' => Keyboard => Text?] All ever deleted shortcuts are still there and ever will come back. This very disproves all assumptions it might be a local problem with an iPhone or such. Anyway Apple Relations pointed out to me that it is an acknowledged bug on THEIR iCloud end.

Frustrating as it gets. Apple is doing worse and worse by the quarter. Not. Financially. That. Is. I hope one day it will strike back economically. Deprived of spirit.

Here is the solution that is time proven for most people and I can verify that it has worked for me and others with no zombies reappearing after many months now:

1. Backup iPhone to iTunes (Do this with a direct connection to your computer, not a backup to iCloud).
2. Install the app iBackupBot on your Mac or PC and open it (the app can be found by googling iCopyBot).
3. Navigate to System files > KeyboardDomain.
4. Delete the "CoreDataUbiquitySupport” folder (it contains the corrupted CloudUserDictionary file(s) that are causing the zombies).
5. I had a couple more keyboard sounding files from 2013 in the KeyboardDomain folder.  One was another CloudUserDictionary.sqlite (I forget the other 2).  If you find any of those old files from 2013, delete them as well.
6. Exit iBackupBot.
7. Restore the iPhone from the backup created in step 1 that now has the corrupted files deleted.
8. Do the same process for the iPad or any other devices you have other than a Mac.
9. When done reboot both everything.
10. Clean up your shortcuts on all devices including Macs - They may not be the same.
11. I deleted all shortcuts on the Mac as they were stubborn.  Don't worry the Mac will begin to sync and restore only your non-zombie shortcuts.
12. Go to bed!  Stuff takes a long time to fully sync.
13. Once everything has synced I found it easier to just delete all of my shortcuts and only type in the ones I wanted to keep into one of the devices (and let it sync them to the others) as there were duplicates on various devices including the Mac.
    

You don't need to do anything to your Mac other than delete all of the shortcuts on your Mac after you have cleaned up your other devices.  Your non-zombie shortcuts will reappear on your Mac after you have re-entered them on your other device, but it will take time to re-sync.  Mine took a couple of days for the Mac, but was much quicker for the iPhone and iPad.

Thanks!

APPLE HAS FINALLY RESOLVED THIS ISSUE.

DONWLOAD AND INSTALL OSX 10.10.5, iTunes 12.2.2 and iOS 8.4.1 or later.

This didn't work. Is there something specific I should be doing after updating oses?

All my machines are current and after 3 days, they're back on my iphone. They don't seem to be coming back on my laptops though. We'll see.

-t.

If you're referring to the latest update not fixing the zombie shortcut issue, it won't.  It only updates Apple Music.  I seriously doubt Apple will ever fix the shortcut issue.

Well major feature of the latest updates is 'Apple Music' indeed. But of course more than that has been rolled out under the lid.

So what I instantly noticed after my afore mentioned updates was that all zombie-shortcuts disappeared at once from all three of my devices: iMac, iPad and iPhone. Even though my devices were in different 'states'. Meaning on my iPhone I had done a fix - not the 'good' one (seriously) though as revommended by pickinic - that lead to removing all shortcuts from the iPhone but in definite so - meaning this iPhone wouldn't sync shortcuts with my other devices. While on my other devices hadn't done a thing.

What i had to do next was turning shortcuts off and on and it worked. However it seems this all had a dramatic cost: Seems dictionaries are gone zombie! They simply don't load anymore. I'm currently working on it..

Someone to confirm issues with dictionaries after latest updates (iOS 8.4.1, iTunes 12.2.2 on a mac and OS X 10.10.5)?

However i don't understand why Apple isn't taking this issue - their customer relations executives call a confirmed bug - more serious and thus allocate the necessary resources. It's a frustrating issue to so many of their customers!

You have to contact AppleCare to get them remove it.

A senior advisor will escalate to the engineer so they can't remove from iCloud drive.

I had the same issue and now it work fine.

OR You Can't wait until the new update IOS 9