I cannot delete iPhone keyboard shortcuts. They keep restoring.

Keyboard Shortcut returning solution

Wow it is insane the amount of people who are having this issue. The reason this error exist because of a corrupt backup/ local keyboard files. Your iPhone has created multiple folders for the keyboard shortcut and iCloud can't delete those and because of this your backups only delete on iPhone and not on iCloud because they are not in the proper folder. IMPORTANT: All your shortcuts are being uploaded to iCloud even the ones you can not delete. Once you attempt to delete them iCloud does delete them (Temporary because your iPhone has a corrupt backup that won't delete it and it just gets restore back)

The solution is very simple.

You could start from a scratch iPhone and lose all your information or you can modify your backup and delete the corrupted files. As I said earlier, your iCloud backup has all your keyboard shortcuts backed up so you won't lose any of them, make sure you do an iCloud backup.

Step one

Backup your iPhone to iTunes.

Step two

You will need a program that can read iTune's backup

Step Three

open the program and select your latest backup from the left hand side of the program

Navigate to

System files > KeyboardDomain

Once inside the Keyboard domain select > Library > Keyboard

Delete "CoreDataUbiquitySupport"

Before you delete it let me explain whats inside. Go ahead and open the coredata folder, there should only be two folders (By Default) in here, but as you can see you have more than two. This is all local and because of that your backups keep coming back because your iPhone keeps reading all the folders when it should only be reading the default one that iCloud gives you.

Step four

Restore your iPhone using iTunes and using this backup. Once your iPhone connects to iCloud it will download your keyboard shortcuts and in the corrupted folder there will only be two folders (Or how many your iCloud reads) making it corrected.

Should anyone have questions or answers please feel free to contact me. This modification is 100% safe as long as you delete what I told you to. Any typos or errors I apologize. I rather fix the issue than waste 1 hour explaining or fixing my typos. I came across this issue on a few iPhones at my company and I had to come up with a solution.

--

Chris

<Link Edited By Host>

Hello everybody! As iBarrett mentioned it is a problem with the sync of iCloud dictionaries after update to iCloud Drive.

Here is the fix for repairing shortcuts syncing. Works if you already have updated to iCloud Drive.

WARNING, this command will force remove all user dictionaries from iCloud!!!

• In terminal run:rm -rf ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~TextInput/Dictionaries
• Restart one of your devices (iPhone or iPad)
• Everything from your device should now upload to iCloud
• Remove recurring or unwanted entries

All changes should now sync to all your devices (iPad, iPhone and Mac)

An update on my “fix” from yesterday.

It’s been 12+ hours now and after several reboots I can confirm that not a single shortcut has come back. I know I’m not of of the woods but it lookspromising.

All shortcuts say deleted and are now synching across all devices. If this changes I’ll let you all know. Kudos to Chris and Picknik. This is mostly theirwork.

Most of the fix is found at the top of page 7.

I have an iPhone, iPad, Mac Pro and Macbook. You don’t need to do anything with the Macs themselves. They are not the problem. Also note I havenever backed up to iCloud. I don’t have that feature tuned on.

1. Backup iPhone to iTunes (I used encrypted backup. The only reason for this is because encrypted backups also save Apple Watch health data).
2. Open this app after installing on your Mac
3. Navigate to System files > KeyboardDomain.
4. Delete Delete "CoreDataUbiquitySupport” folder.
5. I had a couple more keyboard sounding files from 2013 in the KeyboardDomain folder. One was CloudUserDictionary.sqlite (I forget the other 2). I deleted those.
6. Exit icopybot.
7. Restore the iPhone backup created in step 1.
8. Do the same process for the iPad.
9. When done reboot both Macs.
10. Clean up your shortcuts on all devices inc Macs - They may not be the same.
11. Go to bed! Stuff takes a long time to fully sync.
12. 12+ Hours later and several iOS reboots to confirm, no zombie shortcuts are back.

If this works it’s only taken me 12 months of constant messing about to fix it. I wish I was a “glass half full” kind of person!

<Link Edited by Host>

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

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In response to iBarrett:

"1) In terminal:

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

I've done this and get the shortcut on my desktop. Which is kinda cool. But when I click on any of the folders I get a white finder window with this image inside instead of seeing any subfolders or files.

Do you know why and what I can do to see what's inside? And more importantly, if I delete files in this view, are they permentatly deleted elsewhere? I have the same zombie shortcut issue as everyone else on here. So I'd love to delete shortcuts. But I am also curious if I could use this to finally clean up my actual dictionary (used when typing in imessage for instance), to delete words that never should have been saved in the first place from typos.

Thanks!

Timothy

REPOSTING CHRIS' SOLUTION HERE FOR ANYONE THAT NEEDS EASY ACCESS TO IT.

LookInToMyEyes Apr 18, 2015 6:12 PM
Re: I cannot delete iPhone keyboard shortcuts. They keep restoring. in response to rdub76

Keyboard Shortcut returning solution

Jailbreak and non jailbroken devices can perform this (although there are faster methods to access directory on a JB device.)

Wow it is insane the amount of people who are having this issue. The reason this error exist because of a corrupt backup/ local keyboard files. Your iPhone has created multiple folders for the keyboard shortcut and iCloud can't delete those and because of this your backups only delete on iPhone and not on iCloud because they are not in the proper folder. IMPORTANT: All your shortcuts are being uploaded to iCloud even the ones you can not delete. Once you attempt to delete them iCloud does delete them (Temporary because your iPhone has a corrupt backup that won't delete it and it just gets restore back)

The solution is very simple.

You could start from a scratch iPhone and lose all your information or you can modify your backup and delete the corrupted files. As I said earlier, your iCloud backup has all your keyboard shortcuts backed up so you won't lose any of them, make sure you do an iCloud backup.

Step one

Backup your iPhone to iTunes.

Step two

You will need a program that can read iTune's backup

http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm

Step Three

open the program and select your latest backup from the left hand side of the program

Navigate to

System files > KeyboardDomain

Once inside the Keyboard domain select > Library > Keyboard

Delete "CoreDataUbiquitySupport"

Before you delete it let me explain whats inside. Go ahead and open the coredata folder, there should only be two folders (By Default) in here, but as you can see you have more than two. This is all local and because of that your backups keep coming back because your iPhone keeps reading all the folders when it should only be reading the default one that iCloud gives you.

Step four

Restore your iPhone using iTunes and using this backup. Once your iPhone connects to iCloud it will download your keyboard shortcuts and in the corrupted folder there will only be two folders (Or how many your iCloud reads) making it corrected.

Should anyone have questions or answers please feel free to contact me. This modification is 100% safe as long as you delete what I told you to. Any typos or errors I apologize. I rather fix the issue than waste 1 hour explaining or fixing my typos. I came across this issue on a few iPhones at my company and I had to come up with a solution.

--

Chris

Do you guys have IPhone drive & Back Up ON?? For ZCs to be synced I believe this must be on. MINE was off and the procedure I used didnt work. I turned it on and eureka. I could watch ZCs disappear and be added from one platform to another. I also didnt want to back up to ICLoud. This doesnt mean that you cant sync to your OSX platform anymore. Of course you can. You can also choose what not to back up which most likely you will have to do. I had a long list of things not to back up.

DELETE the backups in CHRIS' procedure inside this thread and follow the rest. This should work as mine works great now and I have maybe 500+ shortcuts. Helps with dual language situations as I have mandarin & English shortcuts

Here is my current backup file I just refreshed a moment ago:

As you can see the files are gone... but my undead shortcuts keep coming back.

I was able to follow through with what you guys discovered, and was super hopeful. But it appears there is yet another area these things can hide. I want to give up... but I can't live with these things anymore... You would not believe the nightmare my daughter has left me with. They are so bad that I continue to delete them 2-3 times a day... everyday.

- One other quick note. I exported the sqlite db and viewed it. I confirmed my shortcuts are in here. There must be another source these are coming from.

It appears that your CoreData file is still "messed up" for lack of a better term. I'd delete that again and reboot your iPhone so it will recreate the proper folders. You're missing the additional mobile file as shown in my directory. So you don't have an iPad? That's usually the issue as you have additional files on that other device. I'm guessing that removing the coredata file should clear out any hidden files you may have and reset it with a clean folder containing two mobile files as mine does below. I'm currently on a PC so the icon layout is a little different, but the directory structure is the same.

I didn't need to do anything to my Mac as this resolved the issue with the Mac although it took days for that to sort itself out. I do know that someone gave a solution to get into the Mac directory and I'll try to find that for you as well. I hope this helps.

Just responding to this as it's the solution [I hope!]

But after negotiating passed the "backup & restore is so easy" part, I've edited the files via iBackupBot [deleted them] then restored both my iPhone & iPad after deleting all the suspect folders.

I've added in a test keyboard shortcut on each of the devices that is different than the other. No "realtime" syncing going that I am seeing. Cycling the iPhone on/off --> blank list --> cycle "dictation" --> new "test" shortcut reappears (no zombies). Haven't needed to cycle "dictation" on the iPad.

I went into the new backup file (as I've backed up both devices again after restore) and on the iPhone the folders are back. So I'll just add this screenshot as a point of reference... and start "praying" that what Pickinic said will start happening, .... snycing will resume at some point and zombies will be gone.

I was on the phone with Apple support earlier (iCloud was associating with an old phone number to send a 5-digit verification & found in keychain advanced settings the number is on the device, not be iCloud settings). With this[keyboard shortcut] problem, "yes we are slightly aware of it, maybe next updates will fix it". Right, we know where that will go. 😐

And I guess this is all I have now...

iBarrett, when I run the Terminal command to place the Real iCloud Drive alias on the Desktop, and then open that folder in List View, no Settings folder shows up (see attached screenshot). I even made all invisible files/folders show up, just in case Settings is now a hidden folder.

I'm currently running El Capitan v10.11.1 (15B17c), so perhaps something has changed since you posted this.

Can anyone else verify that the Settings folder no longer appears?

Been searching for over 2 years for a way to remove the 220 zombie Text Replacements that continue to repopulate my MBA, Mac Pro, iPad, and iPhone.

Same problem here.

The irony is that, when iOS 8 came out, I was among those complaining that shortcuts kept disappearing.

Keyboard Shortcuts iOS 8

Now they won't disappear ... ever ... even when deleted.

It's a syncing issue with iCloud "Dictionaries" which is a hidden folder in the iCloud Drive folder. If you're a dev or comfortable using Terminal, the following command will place a "real iCloud drive" folder on your desktop which will allow you to see ALL the items in iCloud Drive. Inside this folder is the folder called "Settings" and then "Dictionaries". You can then see other nested folders from each device ID (Macs, iOS) that write to iCloud.

This is not a fix but here's the steps to view those:

1) In terminal:

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

2) You will now have an alias on your desktop to the iCloud Folder (you must choose to view it in a Finder window as list view)

Drill down until you find a file with the extension .cdt

3) Duplicate that file onto your desktop and CHANGE the extension to .zip and unzip it.

4) ADD the extension .plist to the end of the UNIX file that was unzipped and then you can view it in text edit app and see the shortcuts info.

Again, not fixing anything, but trying to narrow it down and hope that some developer/programmer out there with better knowledge than mine can help!

Just a reminder to everyone to report the issue to Apple and go to Genius Bar if you have the time and call Apple Support:

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

It appears there's only 2 options. 1. Restore as new. That fixes the problem. It deletes all shortcuts and you start over fresh. 2. Delete the unwanted shortcuts, then immediately do an iCloud back up. This works until the phone is rebooted. Then they come back and you have to do this № 2. again. I would suggest submitting feedback on this issue. The more complaints the better.

Feedback Here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

None of the workaround work for me (iOS 8.1.3). The shortcuts go away for some variable amount of time and then inevitably return. I have tried third party keyboards, deleting all 34 of my shortcuts, logging out of iCloud altogether. The shortcuts just keep coming back after some time. I also tried changing my shortcuts to be "loopbacks" e.g. shortcut "abc" resolves to phrase "abc", but then the old shortcut is restored along with the new one (effectively corrupting the shortcuts data). Really bizzare.

There is another discussion going on about this here: Re: iOS 8.1 - Keyboard Shortcuts: Restores Previously Deleted Keyboard Shortcuts

I don't think Apple cares about their users anymore. This problem has been around for a very long time and they have done nothing. Its not the company it used to be and I for one am seriously considering giving some other vendor a try.