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

Peter Oram1What a pointless “help” session you got from Apple.  No wonder this has been going on for almost a year

My sentiments, pagemakers4 -- almost exactly.

It does seem, however, that clearing all iCloud backups of the iOS devices from the Air, then doing a hard wipe of the text replacements from the Keyboard function on the Air IS keeping the nasties from reappearing there. I cleared that list entirely, even deleting Apple's silly "omw!", so now it's an empty list. This is a marker of sorts for me, because any clean install, guest user, or test user (one was created on the Air during all this tech intervention) pulls up a new basic list of its own, one that includes the "omw!" by default. So, that my Air list staying empty tells me is that I'm controlling the function -- but I still don't know how or why. I'm signed in on the Air, so am tied into the same user ID as I was before. The only thing I haven't done on the Air since the cleanup is hardware the iP to iTunes, and if I have to keep avoiding that, it's going to make photo management unnecessarily complicated.

One other thing that's making this difficult, by the way, is that in all the fuss about aligning functions between the OS and the iOS, making sure messaging and photos all work the same way, etc., Apple hasn't aligned the names of this particular function. In the iOS these are called quite specifically "Keyboard Shortcuts," but on the OS they are under KEYBOARD and TEXT, where one selects "replace" and "with" options, while right in the tab next to TEXT is something categorized as SHORTCUTS (thus, KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS), which controls an entirely different set of functions. So, are these SHORTCUTS, TEXT SHORTCUTS, KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS, TEXT REPLACEMENTS, or what? It's too confusing -- and all we really know is they don't work as they should.

As for the iOS devices, I'm trying the workaround of the Canadian keyboard (yah, eh...), and will see if that works. And I'm still not hopeful, because every time it has seems that I (or any of us) have this figured out, it reverts. It's like trying to nail Jello to the wall.

Sheesh.

CRMAC

Chris explains what is happening at the top of Page 7 I think.

He reckons the iTunes backup is corrupted and multiple copies of the iPhone shortcut database are residing locally on the phone, so no matter what you do, they will remain unless you hack the backup and restore to the phone (I have done this 3 times and by shortcuts re-appear after a  couple of days).

Have you tried to re-boot your iOS devices?  Your shortcuts should come back after the phone re-boots. Can you confirm...

I have done hard reboots (holding both power and home buttons until it shuts off) on both the iPhone and iPad. I think both have had clean erase and reinstalls as well. I know the Air has had those.

I don't particularly want to hack my phone, beyond going into the iCloud record and clearing out those old backups I can see.

Is that what you mean?

My solution posted above fixes the issue. I'm nearly 99% sure. It's been a few days now and all the shortcuts are still gone from all three of my apple devices.

ewwatsonAfter deleting the keyboard and re-booting do you re-install the keyboard again?

Remove the keyboard. It might need at least one there in order to do so. So add the English (Canada or UK) keyboard first. Then remove the default English one. Delete all the shortcuts. Delete your iCloud backups. Hard Reset Reboot. Upload new iCloud backup. Do the same on all apple devices. Your welcome Apple. You can pay me now instead of your worthless developers.

Worth noting that I used a custom keyboard (via an app) first before I found that the Canada version fixed it too. I highly doubt you need to do it in that order, but if you find it doesn't work going strait to Canada version then try the custom app born keyboard first like I did.

The reason most aren't screaming to the heavens is because most didnt create hundreds of shortcuts. If they only have a couple they prob don't even notice. But if you have hundreds which are no longer relevant to you then it makes typing painful

I understand that Apple has decided not to provide the public with a log of known bugs. But shouldn't the Apple staff that I speak or chat to be able to find out what others around the world are trying? Even if we imagine that this problem is experienced only by the users who have posted here and elsewhere online, there are at least a hundred or so users affected. (I am confident that there are many, many more - I'm just speaking conservatively.) The Apple staff who have fielded enquiries about this problem should be able to compare notes, and therefore hopefully realise that it's a bug that needs to be fixed, not a problem that can be solved by resetting, restarting, or re-anything.

ewwatson

What’s with the iCloud backup?  I don’t backup to iCloud and my shortcuts still sync between iOS and OS X

I don’t have a backup to delete.

OK so this is what I have done to test it with 1 shortcut...

1. Deleted the unwanted zombie shortcut from my iPhone, iPad, Mac and MacBook.
2. Changed the keyboard on my iPhone and iPad from UK to Canada and deleted UK.
3. Rebooted all devices.
4. Changed the keyboard back to UK and deleted Canada.

So far 14/05/15 15:00 the shortcut has not come back.  I'll update if it does or does not.

An hour an half a dozen re-boots and all good so far.  However, I’ve been here so many times before….

Trust me man it fixes it. There is not a person alive that is more obsessive/perfectionist than me. Functonal at least.

If it does I might just buy you a virtual beer

Being a pessimist about this bug, don’t hold your breath!

I believe in your confidence……  Deleting all my zombie shortcuts now.  Let the fun begin.

Well, precisely 2 hours and 12 minutes later and the first zombie shortcut has returned.

Thanks for your suggestion ewwatson, but it hasn’t worked for me.

IIt's been about 5 days and they aren't comming back on all three of my apple devices. I used a custom keyboard via an app for the first 2 days on both mobile devices. I deleted the iCloud backups and re-synced and reboot while I had the custom keyboards on the devices. Then on the 3rd day I started using the Canada keyboard. So maybe that routine has something to do with it. Because others have reported success with this method as well. Make sure you do it to all devices at the same time.