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

Agreed, page 17 is time proven solution, but don't take any shortcuts in performing the solution (no pun intended).  Still zombie free here since the beginning of June...

Use ibackupbot.  Google it to find it.

I used the solution on page 17 along with Pickinic's addendum with the .sqlite file (page 32?).  I followed the instructions without taking any shortcuts (zombie or otherwise...right, Pickinic?!) and have been zombie shortcut free for over a month now. 

Syncing of shortcuts between my MacBook and iPhone were not as simple, and seemed to be working fine after installing El Capitan, but then suddenly all shortcuts on the MacBook disappeared.  I did the latest update and now they're all back.  But, no zombies!

My iPhone has been six hours free so far. I'll need to give it a few days before being certain, but I've been able to start a sentence with "I've" for the first time in forever without weirdness after the apostrophe. Also, I've successfully deleted and added some shortcuts. Again, I'll have to wait a few days to be certain, but so far I am pleased. Thank you. Now cleaning up my iPad

Hello Kaycee,

Is El Cap the upgrade sitting on my MCP from Yosemite 10.10.3?  I'm Mac OS stupid... and I'm scared to upgrade my MCP being here in Africa.  It is the only piece of my puzzle not upgraded yet, both iPhone & iPad Air2 are in iOS 9.0.x ranges.

When i got the MCP a month ago, it was completely fresh and new with the 10.10.3... I doubt this will bring back syncing, but willing to try...

Does the name change in Yosemite as well... from "Keyborad Shortcuts" to "Text Replacements"?

All this below and Apple still cant fix the problem?!!!!

With this update, your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch become more intelligent and proactive with powerful search and improved Siri features. New multitasking features for iPad allow you to work with two apps simultaneously, side by side or with the new Picture in Picture feature. And built-in apps become more powerful with detailed public transport information in Maps, a redesigned Notes app and an all-new News app. And improvements at the foundation of the operating system enhance performance, improve security and give you up to an hour of extra battery life.

Intelligence

• Proactive assistance
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  • Learns what you listen to in a certain location or at a particular time of day and can automatically display playback controls for your preferred music and audio apps
  • Suggested events and contact details are added to apps based on information found in Mail
• Siri improvements
  • Search your personal photos and videos based on dates, locations and album names
  • Ask Siri to remind you about things you’re looking at in your apps, including Safari, Mail, Notes and Messages
  • Request directions via public transport
• Spotlight search improvements
  • Get sport scores, weather conditions and stock prices
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  • Initiate messages, phone calls and FaceTime calls from contact search results

New iPad Features

• Slide Over
  • Quickly use a second app without leaving the one you’re in
  • Easily switch between Slide Over apps
  • Support for Apple apps and enabled third-party apps
• Split View
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  • Ability to resize your view to give equal attention to both apps or prioritise one app over another
  • Support for Apple apps and enabled third-party apps
• Picture in picture
  • Continue watching a video while using your favourite apps
  • Support for Safari video, FaceTime, Videos and Podcasts and enabled third-party apps
• QuickType improvements
  • Multi-Touch gestures for easier text selection on iPad
  • Quick access to text editing tools with Shortcut Bar on iPad
  • Support for hardware keyboard shortcuts
  • Support for all Unicode emoji flags

Built-in Apps

• Map improvements
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  • Browse for places around you by category, including Food, Drinks, Shopping, Fun and more
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• Redesigned Notes app
  • Add photos to your notes with the built-in camera or from your Photo Library
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• All-new News app
  • Read your favourite newspapers, magazines and blogs, or choose from over a million topics
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• Mail improvements
  • Search improvements help you quickly find what you're looking for by filtering results based on sender, recipient, subject or a combination of options
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• Apple Pay and Wallet improvements
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• New iCloud Drive app
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  • Get the iCloud Drive app in Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive and select Show on Home Screen
• CarPlay improvements
  • Plays back audio messages, letting you hear from people in their own voices
  • Full support for car knob controls, so you can tilt and spin to scroll through lists or pan around in Maps
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Foundation

• Longer battery life
  • Up to one hour of additional time before you need to charge your battery
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• Software updates require less space to download and offer an option to install later
• iOS apps and user interface now use Metal to deliver faster scrolling, smoother animation and better overall performance
• Improved security with two-factor authentication support and a default six-digit passcode support for Touch ID devices

Other improvements

• New San Francisco system font
• Leave a message option if recipient isn't available for a FaceTime call
• Share voicemails from the Phone app using the share sheet
• Flight and package tracking for data detectors
• Health app adds support for reproductive health, UV exposure, water intake and sedentary state data types
• HomeKit adds support for motorised windows and blinds, motion sensors and home security system accessories
• Podcasts has an all-new design, makes it easy to find the latest episodes of your favourite shows, and notifies you when new episodes become available
• Support for Wi-Fi calling on iPad, iPod touch and Mac, without iPhone in proximity on participating carriers
• Wi-Fi Assist to automatically use mobile data when Wi-Fi connectivity is poor
• Transfer content from an Android device with the Move to iOS app, visit http://www.apple.com/uk/move-to-ios for more details

Expanded language support

• New PingFang Chinese system font
• Improved predictions, learning and auto-correction for Chinese in QuickType
• Redesigned punctuation input on 10-key Chinese keyboard
• Redesigned User Interface for right-to-left languages
• Added Siri support for Austria, Belgium (French and Dutch) and Norway
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• New keyboards for French (Belgium), German (Austria), Gujarati, Hindi (Transliteration), Hinglish, Punjabi, Spanish (Mexico) and Telugu
• Predictive input for French (Belgium), German (Austria), Korean, Russian, Spanish (Mexico) and Turkish
• Dictation support for Dutch (Belgium), English (Ireland, Philippines, South Africa), French (Belgium), German (Austria) and Spanish (Chile, Colombia)
• Spellcheck for Finnish and Korean
• Definition dictionary for Hindi, Norwegian and Swedish
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• New Japanese auto-correction and improved predictions and learning in QuickType
• Option to switch between number systems for Arabic and Hindi

Enterprise and Education

• Assign apps directly to iOS devices without needing to have an iTunes Store account configured
• Improved calendar reliability for customers using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync v16
• Expanded Per App VPN support for the built-in IPSec and IKEv2 VPN clients
• New networking controls for managed apps to help limit international data roaming costs
• New restrictions to prevent changes to passcodes, device names and wallpapers, or to disable AirDrop on managed devices
• Third-party app extension support for VPN, advanced content filtering and captive Wi-Fi networks

Accessibility

• Touch Accommodations provides additional touch control for those with physical motor limitations
• Switch Control Recipes to customise features or create your own
• Support for Siri Voices for VoiceOver users
• Additional customisation of AssistiveTouch
• Hardware keyboard support for Key Repeat, Slow Keys and Sticky Keys
• Improved MFi hearing aid audio routing to choose where audio is played

Almost 24 hours later and I'm still zombie free. My iPad is also working perfectly. I've had no syncing issues. All shortcuts are the same across my three devices. Deletions and additions also sync. I've usually seen zombie shortcuts appear by now after deleting them, so this is very, very promising.

Im finding iOS to iOS syncing is fine but iOS to OS X El Capitan is hit and miss.

It's absolutely pathetic that this bug has bug unfixed for 14 months now.

I'm honestly not that Mac savvy - I don't even know what you mean by MCP!  I haven't had any issues with El Cap.  I don't think the term keyboard shortcuts was used to refer to text replacements in Yosemite, though.  That looks the same to me.  It's under settings, keyboard, then "text" - and the list there says "replace with" - pretty sure that's how it was in Yosemite as well.

My replacements are still syncing and not a single zombie in sight!

Glad to hear you're still zombie free!!

I followed the steps in this thread but unfortunately my shortcuts are back after 24 hours.

The only thing I can think of is I have gone wrong somewhere when trying to get rid of them.

I will try again, (forth time lucky maybe) tomorrow.

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

Has anyone else experienced this??

While I remain zombie free and iOS - iOS synching works ok.  iOS 9 - OS X El Capitan is broken.  Nothing syncs.

Over 12 months and despite all of Apple’s promises this still doesn’t work.

I’m guessing it never will.

I can attest to the efficacy of the method described on pages 17/18 by Picinic and others.  After more than a year of wrangling with the "zombie shortcuts" problem I had collected and attempted several different solutions.  To those who are considering using different methods such as signing in/out of iCloud, turning dictation on/off, applying the various terminal commands, etc., I can assure you of this: They will NOT work long-term.

For some reason I had viewed the difficulty level of implementing this solution as moderately high and avoided it.  That was a mistake as it turned out to be incredibly simple, relatively fast and, after about a week of watching and waiting, effective.

To be clear, I have tried EVERY solution.  This is the only one that works.  And it is far more simple than you might think.

A few notes for those reluctant to dive in:

1. While I'm sure that the recommended application in this approach will work I found that I already owned an application (iMazing, which I highly recommend) had access to the same backup file structure.  The interface is excellent and finding the necessary files/folder to delete was simple.  I know nothing about iBackupBot/iCopyBot and can't comment on those but can state unequivocally that iMazing is an excellent tool.
2. Restoring the phone from the modified backup was far less painful than I had anticipated.  I've done full restores before and expected to have to go through a lot of nuisance factors to restore it - especially not knowing anything about this method - but it turned out to be about a one-hour process for my iPhone 6/64GB with about 120 apps, 7500 songs and 10,000 photos.  YMMV but it was pretty quick for me.  Note that I did this via a USB/Lightning cable connected to the computer and not wifi.
3. After the full restoration the phone did require me to enter the password for my Apple ID and iCloud but that was all it took.  It appeared to me that some things were missing at first glance, in particular my credit cards in ApplePay, but rather than starting to reenter things I decided to wait it out and see if iCloud synced everything.  After a few hours absolutely everything came back.  Be patient and don't touch anything after the complete restore.  It will all come back eventually depending on your contents, phone model, computer, etc.

After following the remainder of the instructions including those to go through all of the shortcuts on each device and clear out the ones (for the umpteenth time) that I wanted to delete, I can report after about five days that the zombies are gone and the syncing of new or modified shortcuts is immediate and flawless.

In short, stop kidding yourself and screwing around with other methods.  I avoided using this method because I had convinced myself that it would be difficult.  It was not.  At all.  If you are suffering from the zombie shortcuts problem stop what you're doing, devote an hour or so to this solution and it will be fixed.

My heartfelt thanks to all of the people in this forum who have taken so much of their time to develop a solution that solved an incredibly annoying and productivity-killing problem for me.  This is part of what makes the Apple community terrific and I am sincerely appreciative of their time, research, experimentation and careful documentation.

What program can I use? I'm testing your method but cant find any program that allows me to delete any files.