Q: I cannot delete iPhone keyboard shortcuts.  They keep restoring.

That's not going to work for the long term. You'll eventually end up like I used to, and have five or six of the same shortcut. And sometimes iOS will use your original even though you'll have like ten shortcuts.

So I had like

h1 = h1

h1 = H1

For the highway here in Hawaii. But iOS would choose to use the original h1, and not autocorrect to H1.

One thing I've noticed is that on iOS 9.xx my keyboard is locking up. I think it's related.  See here:

iOS 9 Keyboard/messages locking/lagging...only hard reboot as option

AAgreed Mathew. The last time I saw syncing work was while I was editing them & it was overwriting the 'cache' in those corrupted folders, until I did it enough that the deletes were overwriting those cached shortcuts into no more zombies.

with tests unique to the 3 devices they were created in to see if any pushed to another device or MCP, nodda after 3 weeks of numerous backups, updates, plugged to a power source, synced via wifi.

ive not looked into folders further to see what populates the backup files now, but I'm not having to get rid of zombies.

Been zombie free for months.

Installed El Capitan just now and all the zombies are back.

Deleting them one by one - not synching across devices.

Just hope this is a glitch!

WWaa that *****!

i Did notice today that syncing worked almost instantly as I was at a cafe & connecting to their wifi. I added the password on one device & by the time I switched to the second device, waala it had synced over already! Go figure???

Well, it looks like it is VERY slowly synching again.  The zombies I deleted have remained gone again after multiple reboots.

Picnic, what is interesting is they come flooding back with the El Capitan install which makes me believe they must be hidden in more places then just the iPhone backup…..

I'm glad you got that figured out!  I also deleted more than I needed to and took extra steps as well just to make sure I got everything.  Early on in this string Chris mentioned making sure you're logged out of iCloud on ALL devices or you may get a continuous loop of re-infection.  I'm glad to hear everything is working now.  The syncing issue takes a long time to resolve itself, but it eventually does.

Yes, I think there's definitely an iCloud connection where the zombies were stored in some other old file.  I had logged out of iCloud on all of my devices including my Mac when I did the procedure and that may have kept them from reappearing on my Mac.  I haven't had any zombies on any of my devices or my Mac even after installing El Capitan.

I have been reading this for what seems like hours and I had to create an account so I could chime in with a new present I just discovered. I too have been unwilling to try to fix a problem Apple should be fixing. Months ago my teen made some hilarious substitutions to my keyboard. Luckily none that are obscene, and compared to people here mine are trivial. My favorite is "to" becomes "tooty". Sort of funny. Also, sometimes I try to create new shortcuts and days or weeks later they just disappear. I have the original iPad, a 4s used at home for music, and a 6. Thanks to the cloud it went to all devices. I periodically just go in and delete the zombies, there are just a few so no big deal, compared to problems others are having. You all have my sympathies. Anyway, I have not done the latest update. The zombies came back a few days ago so I decided to research again and read all 40 pages here today in search of a more permanent solution. Just for the heck of it I figured I would just try deleting them again on all devices. None of them were there! Fantastic! But if I type an email and enter "too" I get "tooty". It shows up in the predictive keyboard. Seriously. Now I have to try to figure out how to override that, because it has apparently learned it from unintended repeat use. And I paid for this.

LLast one is easy. Go to general reset and reset keyboard that will delete all the learned words

Thanks!!! That was easy. I feel silly for not knowing that, but hey, I learned something.

1. Settings

2. General

3. Reset (last item down)

4. Reset dictionary (fourth item down)

I originally came across this thread last year, but none of the solutions worked for me. Now here we are one year later and I'm still going crazy with the stupid zombie shortcuts. I'm tired of deleting them on three different devices multiple times a week. These problems started showing up for me in iOS 7, I believe. I also have problems with spelling corrections that are mental. For instance, my iPhone and iPad get extremely confused with apostrophes. The most bizarre replacements are being made after the apostrophes. I'm on my iPad now, so I don't dare type them for you for fear of giving them user reinforcement. I imagine it's related to the same  Dictionary problem. I just skimmed through  40 pages of forum posts. Is the solution still on page 17 and 18? Or now with El Capitan, has the game changed? What do I need to do to get rid of these blasted shortcuts? I don't want to waste your time, but I don't want to waste mine either. What is the most recent, proven solution? Thanks a ton.

I Did page 17 months ago  and it's still fine now with El Capitan

I'm zombie free a month out since page 17, yet syncing has not returned.... I started another thread for ***** and giggles on how all other things sync, just not shortcuts...Re: Keyboard Shortcuts/Text Replacement Not Syncing

What app do you recommend to dig into those backups? Mine are old and don't play nicely with the new encrypted backups.