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Text replacement / keyboard shortcuts gone after iOS 10

Is anyone else experiencing the loss of their text replacement shortcuts after updating to iOS 10? I feel like this is the opposite problem we had here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6656922?start=465&

Everything else transferred over in my settings (for example, my extra keyboards are installed, my frequently used emoji are the same, my bluetooth connections are all there, etc) except this.

I went from literally a thousand+ text replacements to the default "omw" (On my way!) replacement.

I've tried turning on and off iCloud drive (although tech says the keyboard shortcuts are stored in the local backup not the cloud) and restarting the phone, which is a trick I found online. It doesn't work.

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 9.1

Posted on Sep 14, 2016 11:17 AM

41 replies

Appanage

Level 1

9 points

Sep 18, 2016 9:46 AM in response to Matthew110607

What almost always works for me:

In macOS

1. Highlight all text substitutions in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text

2. Drag them to the desktop, resulting in the creation of a file called Text Substitutions.plist

3. Make sure they're all still highlighted in the window and delete them

4. Wait 30 seconds or so

5. Drag the Text Substitutions.plist file into the window, adding them all

On your iOS device:

Hold down both Home and Power buttons until the phone starts reboot with the Apple symbol appearing. Give them a little time (maybe 30 seconds or so). They should appear.

As always, YMMV and I'm not responsible for any of your results, good or bad.

Sep 18, 2016 5:30 PM in response to Appanage

Worth a try, but didn't work for me. I ended up manually re-entering my most used ones for now.

Sep 19, 2016 8:21 AM in response to LordOphidian

Signing out of iCloud and Drive and rebooting the phone resulted in the "omw" shortcut coming back and the deleting of five "essential" shortcuts I had made in the interim. It eventually restored my five "new" shortcuts that I had created after this problem began, but not the other 995 or so shortcuts I had made prior to upgrading to iOS 10.

So that says to me that somehow upgrading just wiped them off of iCloud for some reason. It's also VERY clear that the issue is iCloud-based, not locally backed up or anything based as initially suggested.

Sure would love a way to get back my 1,000 or so shortcuts so I don't have to manually enter them again, but if it restored five new ones, that's probably a good indication that the old ones are gone.

This happened to me when I moved to iOS 9 as well. But not on incremental updates like 9.1, 9.2, etc. And then again on 10.

I'm hesitant to redo all my shortcuts only to have them disappear when I get my new iPhone 7 next week though...so I'd love it if someone could solve this problem.

I wonder if I could trigger the transfer from iCloud to the phone using an old backup. There is a file called CloudUserDictionary.sqlite located under iPhone/System Files/Keyboard Domain/CoreData/Mobile/User Dictionary/D5555ds;aljkfd;lfj/store

Appanage

Level 1

9 points

Sep 19, 2016 8:27 AM in response to Matthew110607

I'm not so sure the old ones are "gone", though effectively they might be if there's no device that'll sync with them. I've had Macs that either continued to have all of them and/or continued to sync with the "old" shortcuts while one or more iOS devices weren't synching with them but were successfully syncing amongst themselves.

My standard practice has been to regularly drag them from macOS to a backup folder just in case, particularly when new OSes are released.

Regardless it's definitely a nasty bug and a massive PITA that needs far more attention than it's been given. If I wasn't running loads of Macs and iOS devices I'd've lost mine to whatever wormhole they appear to remain in many times after I upgrade a device.

Sep 19, 2016 10:51 AM in response to Appanage

That actually makes sense...so are you saying there is a degree of "new device ID = won't sync back from the cloud" and the new iOS changes your device essentially?

Appanage

Level 1

9 points

Sep 19, 2016 11:15 AM in response to Matthew110607

It appears to be something to this effect. I'm unsure if there's a "sync upgrade trigger" of some sort that's supposed to move previous replacements to a new folder or new format on version upgrade but it appears that what's old isn't lost and what's new will at least partially sync to other devices – I just haven't been able to take the time to try out all the scenarios.

This appears to jibe with the "export/import" drag and drop out of and back into the macOS Keyboard text replacement window on an upgraded macOS box.

I honestly have no idea what I would have done if I didn't have all mine on a previous OS version macOS box. I've had this happen to me three times now, and that's what saved my bacon.

Sep 19, 2016 11:19 AM in response to Appanage

Unfortunately I don't have a Mac anymore (work stuff doesn't function on a Mac, and got tired of dual booting etc - the Mac wasn't so awesome to make it worth it for me). My wife still has a Mac, however.

She doesn't really use the App Store or anything on there...so this time, when I manually re-enter all my crap on my iPhone, can you walk me through how to sync it to her Mac and then back it up, and sync it back to my phone so I have it saved?

Sep 20, 2016 7:04 AM in response to Matthew110607

I reset my phone and that worked for me.

Sep 20, 2016 9:52 AM in response to Matthew110607

Has anyone actually managed to get back their text replacements?.

I Have an Ipad pro 9.7, with the ios upgrade my other ipad pro wouldn't charge so the apple store gave me a new one. When i restored it from a icloud backup i got everything except the text replacements.

i Have tried signing out of icloud and rebooting the ipad.

but nothing works

Sep 20, 2016 10:04 AM in response to rluschtinetz

A couple of people have claimed that resetting the phone worked, which leads me to believe that they never really lost them in the first place.

Resetting the phone probably wasn't the cause of getting them back. Time probably got them back, a reset just happened to be in between. That's my experience in the past. Usually on a reset they take a second to appear - meaning they probably would have appeared anyhow.

KellanC

Level 1

4 points

Sep 22, 2016 9:55 AM in response to Matthew110607

My experience is similar, with an additional issue. (Settings freezes when trying to access)

After upgrade from iPhone 6 to iPhone 7 Plus (restoring from iCloud backup)... I cannot access the Text Replacement setup in Settings. (They also do not work in any apps)

After a Reset, I was momentarily able to access the list, which showed my old shortcuts, and I noticed a very old one in there, and attempted to delete it. That froze the Settings app.

Now I cannot access the Text Replacement settings at all, even after Reset. Clicking on the link highlights the choice, but goes no further.

My replacements are still visible on iPad & Mac

KellanC

Level 1

4 points

Sep 22, 2016 10:14 AM in response to KellanC

UPDATE: After posting above reply, I did another iPhone Reset, and also edited one of my shortcuts on the Mac, then waited for a short time to allow any syncing to occur. Issue appears to have resolved itself. Shortcuts working again on iPhone, and are syncing properly between all devices.

This appears to have been an iCloud issue. Hopefully will continue working now w/o further problems!

Sep 27, 2016 7:55 AM in response to Appanage

this worked for me on the Mac. Thanks!

Sep 28, 2016 8:12 AM in response to Matthew110607

As expected, Apple was not able to solve their own problem, and their response frankly irritates me:

Hello,

My name is ******. I will be helping with this RTA from this point on.

I tried to see if we could recover their text replacement data but wasn’t able to. Doesn’t look like it was ever in iCloud Drive. Please understand that this is the fully extent of recovery possible for the missing data. Sorry we couldn’t do more for them.

Regards,

******.

iCloud Site Support Engineering

FeBe95

Level 1

14 points

Oct 5, 2016 4:01 AM in response to jrleeper1

Oh my god, I did it! Okay, here's how (I don't know if each step if necessary):

1. Go into Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement

2. Only the default one was shown for me

3. Go back to Keyboard (I had all switches enabled)

4. Turn off Auto-Capitalisation, Auto-Correction and "." Shortcut

5. Immediately turn off your phone without leaving the page

6. Turn it back on

7. Go into Settings > General > Keyboard

8. Turn all switches back on (wait some seconds?) and go into Text Replacement

All of my ~200 text replacements re-appeared!

Steps I tried before:

signing out of iCloud multiple times - didn't work
adding/deleting new ones on the affected device - didn't work
adding/deleting new ones on a different device - didn't work

I nearly gave up... And now they are back, yay!

Apple should definitely add a "sync now" button or enable "pull to refresh" for this list.

Text replacement / keyboard shortcuts gone after iOS 10