Q: Keyboard shortcut problems in iPhone 5S with iOS 8 update

I experienced this issue when running some of the early iOS 8 betas, then the final release of iOS 8 didn't exhibit this issue. Upgraded to iOS 8.1, and now my phone is intermittently losing keyboard shortcuts again.

Running iOS 8.1 on an iPhone 5S, if that helps anybody

Have you tried backing up to iCloud from your iPhone, then turning Backup off afterwards?

This is what worked for me on my 5S under 8.0.2.

I logged off iCloud. Rebooted phone.

Logged back into iCloud after reboot.  Asked me to update iCloud Drive.  I did so.

After updating iCloud Drive, I did an iCloud backup.  But turned everything off except for Contacts and Documents and Data (these were the only ones that got backed up)

After backup was complete, I turned off Contacts and Documents and Data off.  As well as the Backup option.  The only thing I kept ON in iCloud settings was iCloud itself, and Find My Phone.

After doing these, my keyboard shortcuts hasn't disappeared.  Been over a week now.  I've even tested out the Predictive Keyboard on/off advice, to see if having Predictive Keyboard ON had an effect.  On or off now, shortcuts are still here.  I've had PK on this whole time.

Note however, I don't sync my 5S to my Mac (except to do a backup on iTunes).  So my keyboard shortcuts don't apply to my Mac. 

Quick update: iOS 8.1 didn't fix issue.  Upgrading to Yosemite didn't fix the issue (but it deleted all Mac shortcuts, in fact). 

But then I upgraded to iCloud Drive on all devices (iPad, iPhone, & Mac), it started working after about 24 hours.  I don't know if they will stay synced (fingers crossed!), but that has solved the issue for me.  (all on iOS 8.1 if it matters).

FWIW, I had predictive text OFF when I upgraded to iCloud Drive.  I haven't dared turn that on in case it stops working for me.

After 5 days my keyboard shortcuts have remained intact. iCloud Drive upgrade on all my devices resolved this issue for me. However it did delete everything first including the shortcuts on my Mac. I decided to re-type them from scratch. That's when it got pushed to all my devices and has remained ever since. A few days after though, all my original shortcuts that I thought were permanently gone reappeared on all my devices, and I had to delete all the duplicates. I do have predictive keyboard turned on and I have not had any issues with losing the shortcuts on any of my devices. Thank goodness as this feature is so ingrained in my workflow. I believe that sync was broken by iCloud Drive in my case, and waiting for Yosemite to make the move caused my issue. Others are having varying degrees of trouble with this. I am really weary of iCloud Drive. It seems to be slower and is causing sync irregularities across a number of Apple and third party apps for me over the past week. I am not intervening in any way and things seem to sort themselves out on their own. It is frustrating to see Apple struggle with the cloud. Maybe it's a scaling issue with so many users joining with new devices or the software upgrades. I thought iCloud documents and data was fast and reliable. MobileMe never caused me any issues other than the odd duplicate. iCloud Drive is another story. It's every bit as slow as iDisk was. One example is different badge counts on Reminders on my Mac, my iPhone, and iCloud.com. All are in sync except the badge count. If i wait several hours, it all lines up again. :-/

I would suggest making a dozen or so new entries manually, and just waiting a day or so after all your devices have iCloud Drive turned on. It seemed to kick iCloud Drive into gear for me.

I'm also having this problem on my iPhone 6, iPhone 5 and iPad mini Retina, all with iOS 8.1. All shortcuts have disappeared and I can't even add new ones. When I save, no message comes up, but the list is still empty. Same behavior on all devices.

All the suggestions mentioned here do not work. I'm running out of ideas

I also clicked on the "Branched to a new discussion link" https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6542404, but it says "Unauthorized" - why?

Just wanted to mention that I'm having this problem on my MB Air only. As of yesterday when I upgraded it to Yosemite. No keyboard shortcuts appearing on the MBA, but are still on my iMac running Mavericks and 2 iPhone 4s running iOS7 and a iPad running iOS7. Haven't got around to upgrading the iOS on the phones yet - maybe I won't for now! Tried disconnecting from icloud on the MBA and reconnecting - didn't help.

I turned off predictive text, auto-correction, and shortcut. I then turned off my device and turned it back on. I typed a few words and then went back into keyboard and turned everything back on. All of my shortcuts reappeared and started working again.

Hello all...

All shortcuts gone after updating my iPad to iOS 8...

The steps that had worked on my iPhone 5s did not work on my iPad...

So: here's what I did:

I installed textExpander Touch 3 ! !

With the custom keyboard that comes on iOS 8, I expand my snippets effortlessly in ALL apps.

Snippets sync via DROPBOX with no issue between my Mac, my iPhone and my iPad...

Go SMILE !

Does 8.1.1 fix the issue?

As far as I can tell, no. My shortcuts are all out of sync and updates I make on one device won't appear on the other devices.

Edit: I see OS X 10.10.1 is available now too... will download that and see if there's any improvement.

Nope. Fixes nothing. But there seems to be some initial improvement to third-party keyboards (not disappearing so far). To early to say though.

Original problem is the same for me.

OS X 10.10.1 doesn't seem to make a difference, either

Looks like this bug is here to stay.

bug went away for me when I upgraded all devices and my Mac to iCloud Drive. Haven't had a problem since. DO make a copy of your shortcuts before upgrading your Mac to Yosemite, but otherwise I haven't had issues at all

My shortcuts work but I'm froze out of setting on both the iPad and iPhone.

Apple support wants to replace my phone thinking its hardware, but it's not. Really strange how they deduce things. It did it in my iPhone 5, then three weeks later upgraded to my iPhone 6. And the iPad just started doing it. Anyway, how is that a hardware problem???

Id be happy if I can get rid of the shortcuts at this point since I have no control over them.

@ArtWindows Very funny.