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macOS High Sierra and iOS 11 May Fix Long-Standing Sync Issues With iCloud Text Replacements [Update: Soon]

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Apple appears to have resolved long-running iCloud sync issues linked to its text replacement feature with the release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra. Originally introduced in Snow Leopard and iOS 5, text replacements let users create shortcut text that, when typed, expands to something longer, thus saving input time.

The feature can be found on iOS devices in Settings -> General -> Keyboards -> Text Replacement, and in System Preferences -> Keyboard on Macs. Ideally, changes to the text snippets list on one device should sync to all devices logged in using the same Apple ID, but that hasn't always been the case, as MacStadium's Brian Stucki attests:

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After years of struggling to get text replacement syncing to work properly, Stucki recently decided to set up a weeks-long experiment to test the reliability of the feature across hundreds of Apple devices running various versions of iOS and OS X/macOS. In short, Stucki's results suggested that the text replacement syncing service was "a complete mess" and routinely failed to sync text snippets across devices.

Following the experiment, Stucki wondered why the syncing had remained so poor across several generations of OS, given that other iCloud syncing features such as Apple Notes had improved in recent years. As noted by Daring Fireball's John Gruber, these improvements corresponded with the introduction of the CloudKit API in 2014, suggesting that text replacements had not been upgraded to run on the newer syncing framework.

However, in an update to his experiment posted on Tuesday, Stucki reported that when he made text replacement changes on a Mac running macOS High Sierra, surprisingly his edits were recognized and synced across nearly every device on the same Apple ID, regardless of OS. "Perhaps a clean install of High Sierra is now saving snippets correctly?" he wondered.

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Since then, iOS developer Guilherme Rambo has claimed that text replacements do sync through CloudKit on iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, suggesting Apple has got around to updating the feature to run on the more reliable API. So if you're having trouble syncing text snippets, updating your devices to Apple's latest operating systems might be the best course of action.

Update: An Apple spokesperson informed John Gruber later on Wednesday that an update to move text replacement syncing to CloudKit should be rolling out to iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra 10.13 "in the next month or so".

Article Link: macOS High Sierra and iOS 11 May Fix Long-Standing Sync Issues With iCloud Text Replacements [Update: Soon]
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[doublepost=1518289546][/doublepost]This has been driving me nuts for years. As of this morning, my MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone are syncing perfectly.

Cross fingers.
 
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My iMac has been syncing these for a few months now. With no problem. Until yesterday when I upgraded to 10.13.4, now the list is empty on the iMac. Seriously Apple!!!
 
Mine have been syncing (iphone, Mac Mini) for a few months now. Haven’really tried my few shortcuts. Time to check I guess.
 
This has been driving me nuts for some time. I didn’t realize there was a fix with ios 11 because the syncing issue has always been a problem. Just did some testing, and i can confirm that for me, it still isn’t fixed.

MacBoook Pro (mid-2014) macOS Sierra 10.12.6
iPad Pro (9.7) iOS 11.3
iPhone X iOS 11.3

MacBook and iPad sync fine. iPhone X syncs with nothing (although at one point ity must have, since most of my snippets are there). The new ones added more recently to iPhone are not on other devices.
 
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