iOS 8 upgrade deleted keyboard shortcuts

I lost all my keyboard shortcuts on my iPhone 5s after upgrading to iOS 8. They still showed up on my iPad Air (iOS 8) and iMac (10.9.5). There were, however, massive sync problems, sometimes they would only flow from one device to all the others, sometimes from one device to only one of the other two, sometimes not at all.

I deleted all my shortcuts and started from scratch, deleting “~/Library/Application Support/Ubiquity”, ~/Library/Dictionaries” and “~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~TextInput” from the iMac and KeyboardDomain from my iOS devices.

Rebooted everything a dozen times.

Toggled Documents & Data Sync off and on a dozen times too in all kinds of combination with rebooting and deleting the aforementioned files.

Everything always starts working and syncing fine for a very short while, but sooner or later one of my devices stops receiving new shortcuts as I re-add them.

I reboot that device and it catches up. I enter new shortcuts, and that device doesn’t get any new shortcuts. This time, a reboot doesn’t fix anything.

After using my devices for a while, I notice shortcuts are entirely gone from both the iPhone and iPad, but not from the iMac.

I even upgraded my iPhone 5s to a 6, and right off the bat it had issues with keyboard shortcut sync. I also setup my iPad as new, and same thing: right off the bat, sync issues with keyboard shortcuts.

i had an iPod touch 5th gen and put loads of shortcuts on it, then they went onto my macbook which was awesome..... then i got an iPhone 6 and the keyboard shortcuts won't go on to the iPhone!!! I've tried loads, but documents and data on iCloud is so vague that i can't see whats on it. all the shortcuts r on my macbook but i need them on my iPhone!!!! I've waited a week+ just in case it was a slight delay with syncing but it isn't!! also even more weirdly the iPhone was restored from my iPod backup!! plz help, this is so annoying!!! thanks 🙂

I think I figured it out. They disappear when you have predictive text on. Simply turn that off and they all reappear and work fine. Hopefully Apple realizes this and fixes it.

Grr. Never mind. They're still disappearing. WTH, Apple?!

Google this:

ios OR apple keyboard shortcuts site:discussions.apple.com

There are more than 150 results in Google...

My keyboard shortcuts have been totally random and intermittent since I upgraded to iOS 8, and iOS 8.0.2 does not help at all.

IF we all make detailed comments about our own symptoms at

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

there will be a better chance it may get fixed.

done, i really want them to fix it cause ITS SO ANNOYING!!! iCloud settings are way too brief, for example: documents and data is either off or on, if only we could edit the specific documents and data in iCloud it'd be easier to see what this keyboard shortcut problem is!!!!

they were working on my iPod touch (read my comment before which explains my full situation :] ) but i needed to add a new one so i did it on my mac and in about 2 mins it went onto my iPod and they worked fine.... then i restarted my iPod and they've GONE 😢. this shortcut thing is actually really annoying me now😠. they only reliably work on my mac (which i don't really need them on) and they are mostly inexistent on my iPod, and they've just never worked on my iPhone 6 😐. it just needs to be fixed cause this happened to me in iOS 7, but we just have to wait until apple realises they've messed everyones shortcuts up on iOS 8. I'm frustrated!!

Keyboard shortcuts disappearing on iOS 8, a solution.

PROBLEM: Keyboard shortcuts fail, but they do appear in the list on Settings; General; Keyboard; Shortcuts?

WORKAROUND: Turn OFF iCloud Drive. Presto! Keyboard shortcuts work...

Turn ON iCloud Drive. Test shortcuts. A-Okay!

You may need to do this several times a day, as needed, whenever keyboard shortcuts stop working.

{{ iOS 8.0.2; iPad Air }}

i dont have iCloud drive 😟

i think it is just a massive glitch in iOS 8, on my iPod the shortcuts sometimes work but sometimes don't, even if i look in shortcut settings its sometimes empty 😟 my iPhone 6 always has empty shortcuts even though its on the same iCloud account with everything synced 😢

I think I figured it out. They disappear when you have predictive text on. Simply turn that off and they all reappear and work fine. Hopefully Apple realizes this and fixes it.

You're a genius! I have spent about 6 hours yesterday trying to find out what the problem was with my shortcuts. They disappeared and all of a sudden they showed up again just to disappear again with no obvious reason. I then had the "brilliant" idea of restoring my phone to a recent back up through iTunes. But that was when the **** hit the fan 😠. iTunes came up with the idea to restore the phone to a more recent backup without telling me that this more recent back up was in fact the one from my daughters phone. Now guess what, it took about 3 hours of chat time with Apple support to restore my phone. But all shortcuts were gone. Btw, I had typed them all in previously after they had disappeared the first time. What a waste of time! After the restoring process I was told that Apple was aware of the problem and looking for a solution but how long is this going to take. We paid good money for 2 new phones and what do we get, a headache. I have far better things to do than trying to fix problems with my phone after an upgrade. If this keeps happening then I will ask for a refund and buy a Samsung or similar. I must say, I am not very happy at all but thanks to your advice newsboysgrl777 at least I can start re-entering all the shortcuts once again and keep my fingers crossed that they don't vanish into cyber space.

update to iOS 8.1, it has fixed it for me!!

Thanks ConorjW. I have just updated it right now and thought the problems were solved but guess what? My OS8 headache is getting bigger and bigger. I've just tried to login to an Internet platform and when the first shortcut came up the whole thing FROZE! I couldn't even type anymore. I wonder if other people experience the same thing. Good luck Apple maybe you can fix it with OS9?

I’ve upgraded to iOS 8.1, OS X Yosemite, and iCloud Drive. I backed up to iTunes and iCloud. Shortcuts are still not synchronizing reliably between platforms. When it does sync, it’s only between the iPad and iMac.

My iPhone 6 was setup as new when I bought it, and I reset my iPad Air as new at the same time.

I think I figured something out that might work.

After wrestling with it for a while I thought that the keyboard might the one that "carries" the shortcuts (I think I read that somewhere online). So since I had two keyboards in place, I delete the my main one (English) and immediately added back in again. And there they were all of them! 🙂 Hope this helps someone.

Good luck