I cannot delete iPhone keyboard shortcuts. They keep restoring.

Sorry, but that does nothing to remedy this for me. I had already tried that -- deleting those dictionaries from iCloud. Unfortunately all it does is repopulate iCloud with the same shortcuts that I can still not access to edit or delete as the Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts still results in a crash on all my iOS devices. So, there must be a way for Apple to "reset" and delete the shortcuts that I cannot get rid of in iCloud, but no one at AppleCare or Genius bar seems to know how to do that.

They have "elevated" my case several times but I have never received a followup call so it's very frustrating.

Mine are deleted for now. I deleted those I don't want, then immediately backed up to iCloud while they were still deleted. I'm sure something will trigger them showing back up again. What, I don't know. But at least they're gone for now. Have been for several hours. They'll probably return with the next hard reset or back up. We'll see.

You are absolutely right! Once you have deleted all the dictionaries from iCloud they will upload from your devices again. That's what I have stated in step 3.

iBarrett wrote:

I can still not access to edit or delete as the Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts still results in a crash on all my iOS devices.

If I understood correctly your issue is that you are unable to access shortcuts settings on your iOS device to delete them because it crashes? If so, this is other question.

I am totally agree that there should be a simple way to reset these iCloud dictionaries!

@romanaleksandrov Yes, that's correct... there's no way for me to edit or delete the shortcuts because they just re-upload again and I can't access them in settings as it crashes, but as you said that is a different specific issue that some people are experiencing in addition to this issue so it seems to be tied together. Hope your fix works for everyone that can access the settings app -- at least that will help some people. Thanks to everyone keeping the conversation alive in hopes that Apple will take notice of the issue!

I experienced problems in the past trying to get my iOS and Mac OS text shortcuts to sync properly. Eventually I deleted them all and switched to using Text Expander, but periodically the text shortcuts would return like zombies from the dead. I eventually managed to kill them all off, save for on my iPhone, where they would inevitably return, which was very very annoying.

I'm told that this is a problem caused by one or more Core Data sync bugs and there's nothing to be done about it until Apple fixes those bugs.

However, if you're like me and you just want to get rid of all your text shortcuts for good, I found a hacky solution that's held for two days now (which is a long time in my experience with this bug, so fingers crossed…)

I used the method from @iBarrett's post (Nov 25, 2014 11:16 AM) and learned it's directly related to information from @romanaleksandrov's post (Feb 12, 2015 1:30 PM), so thanks to them for giving me the map that opened the way for my hack.

Based on @iBarrett's post, I navigated to the ~/Desktop/Real\ iCloud\ Drive directory using the Terminal and found a folder there called com~apple~TextInput/; it was into this folder that my zombie text shortcuts were resurrecting themselves via the *.cdt files that @iBarrett mentioned. Since I wanted them gone for good, I simply deleted that directory with rm -rf com~apple~TextInput/ and then very quickly created an empty file with that same name and no privileges:

touch com~apple~TextInput ; chmod 0000 com~apple~TextInput

With the zombies' graveyard now already "occupied" by nothing, they can't come back from whatever plane they're currently hanging around to mess up my life. So far, so good.

I don't know if this is a good interim solution to your problems with misbehaving iOS/Mac OS text shortcuts in the event that you want to continue using that part of the Apple cloud magic. But if you just want to move on or move away from them, it seems to work.

I had restored from old backups and that did not fix the problem. Perhaps restoring and setting up the iPhone as a new device does work. Unfortunately, that's been a deal-breaker option for me in the past and continues to be so… just too much information to restore for me to go through with the "nuclear option."

One correction to my post: the *.cdt files don't appear in the com~apple~TextInput/ directory, they show up in a subdirectory to which com~apple~TextInput/ is the parent. Everything else in my post remains accurate and effective.

Still totally broken for me.

I have an iMac, MB Air, iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 all running the latest software and it’s impossible to keep the keyboard shortcuts in sync.

Either deleted items keep re-appearing, or the same items duplicate again and again or items don’t sync at all.

Totally broken since iOS8

GAH!!!!

I don't know how but the zombie iOS keyboard shortcuts came back to life on my iPhone sometime in the last 24 hours. They are not present on any of my computers or other iOS devices, just the blasted phone.

I am so sick and tired of this. Does anyone else have some idea how to close off this unknown entry point for the infection? Perhaps there are additional crumbs of information in the iCloud data storage?

😟

P.S.: None of my devices are using iCloud Drive yet, they are all still using the older iCloud data storage method. iOS 8.1.3 and Mavericks.

The above may be a good solution. A friend with the same problem had this solution posted elsewhere.

"1. Deleted the 3 folders found in var/mobile/Library/Keyboard/CorsDataUbiquitySupport.

There was only one folder there. Which may be part of why they keep coming back.

2. I also backed up and deleted the dynamic-text.dat and LocalDictionary files at the bottom of var/mobile/Library/Keyboard.

After a reboot only the dynamic-text.dat file recreated itself so far. The LocalDictionary did not because I reset the Keyboard Dictionary for good measure. So far so good.

Update: Deleting those files has apparently worked!"

I hope everyone gets this problem fixed. Regardless of the solution used. ☮

Update on shortcut issues... the only solution that is reportedly working is detailed below. This has been used to fix both the reappearing shortcuts issue and/or the keyboard shortcuts crash on iOS.

(1) On any affected iOS device go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content And Settings

(WARNING this will obviously delete everything so you must be willing to go this far with no guarantee)

(2) If you also have a Mac(s) proceed to step (3) otherwise skip to step (6)

(3) On Mac, go to System Preferences > Keyboard >Text Tab and delete ALL the shortcuts you have there.

(4) Using Terminal app on your Mac, the following command will place a “Real iCloud Drive" folder on your desktop which will allow you to see ALL the hidden items in iCloud Drive:

ln -s ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/ ~/Desktop/Real\ iCloud\ Drive

(5) Open this new iCloud Folder alias (you must choose to view it in a Finder window as list view). Inside this folder is the folder called "Settings" and inside that, "Dictionaries.” Delete the “Dictionaries” folder and empty trash.

(6) Set up your iOS device(s) as NEW. Meaning, you must manually reinstall any apps, settings, etc. Do NOT restore from iTunes or iCloud backup as that will just leave you with the same corrupted issue. Before going through all the time that takes, start with singing into your device with your Apple/iCloud ID and see if the shortcuts issue seem to be fixed and when you enter new ones they sync between devices and/or Mac.

- This solution was suggested to me by a developer and it seems to have worked for my iOS shortcuts crashing & syncing debacle. The issues have not reappeared for the last week and all the shortcuts are properly syncing between an iPhone, iPad and 2 Macs. Please don’t get angry with me if you try this and it doesn’t work for you. I’m just sharing an option.

- I continue to submit feedback to Apple about the issue and have still been having followup calls with AppleCare. They just keep saying “a fix will be in an upcoming iOS software update.” They’ve been saying that to me me since iOS 8.0 and we are now at 8.1.3…

Step 5 does not work even if I have a Finder window in list view. Works only in column view for me.

Instead of step 4 and 5 I would suggest using terminal command below to delete "Settings" directory from iCloud:

rm -rf ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~TextInput/Dictionaries

For me simply deleting “Dictionaries” folder worked fine. After I restarted iPhone all shortcuts came back but when deleted from iPhone settings again, disappeared forever. In your case you could not navigate to keyboard settings in iPhone if I remember correctly. I would suggest your solution only to people who have the same issue.

Otherwise, deleting “Dictionaries” from iCloud and restarting iPhone should suffice.

Still no solution for people without а Mac though 😟

Jsai Joe, have you rebooted since doing that? I had tried something like your suggestion, and it worked fine until a reboot of any kind was done, be it a hard reset, soft reset or whatever. Does a reboot bring the shortcuts back? Let us know here. I hope your solution works. Too late for me. I already restored my phone as new. I'm glad I did because I had other issues that cured along with the shortcuts problem.

I have not had any crashes before or after iOS 8.2. I haven't seen that issue reported on any other iPhone forums. All I had was the shortcuts not deleting. And unless your jailbroken, all you can do is restore the phone as new.

I don't think that works. It appears the shortcuts are not actually stored in iCloud as other documents and data are stored. I tried deleting the shortcuts and immediately doing a fresh back up. They stayed gone until I did a reboot of any kind. So I think if you deleted them. Then restored to a new back up of iCloud, you'll still get them back with a reboot. Actually they would most likely be there after restoring. Apple told me to restore as new. That worked. It wiped out every single shortcut I had listed. So I was able to start fresh. Plus, I can delete a shortcut now and it stays gone.