Shortcuts have vanished from the Shortcuts app

[AppleFan22]

I depend on a lot of Shortcuts these days. The main ones are on my home screen and work most of the time (they often refuse to work, but that’s not what this thread is for...)

Lots of my shortcuts have vanished from inside the main Shortcuts app, but they still exist on my home screen, and crucially, they do still run. The issue is that they now can't be edited, and lots of them are rather convoluted and I wouldn't remember how to recreate them.

Anyone else had similar issues? Running PB iOS 26.6 (23G5028e), updated yesterday and had the same issue before update.

 

[Diopter]

A fair number of users seem to be experiencing that issue since the '26 OSes, where their Shortcuts just vanish. It seems like some kind of syncing or indexing issue where the Shortcuts are still there somewhere, but they aren't visible any more.

I found a few solutions, one of which is recovering them using Time Machine from a Mac, and another is to Offload the app. I posted about it over here, along with a link to a Shortcut to backup your Shortcuts:

Time Machine and Shortcut to backup Shortcuts:

iOS 26.3 Beta 3 ― Bug Fixes, Changes, and Improvements

Unfortunately Shortcuts syncing has always been super buggy (Apple should be embarrassed by how bad it is), so it wouldn't surprise me if the missing Shortcuts were because of some terrible syncing bug/glitch, maybe one that's even completely unrelated to running a beta. If you have a Mac and...

forums.macrumors.com

Offloading method to recover the Shortcuts on iOS/iPadOS:

iOS 26.3 Beta 3 ― Bug Fixes, Changes, and Improvements

That's curious! Maybe they're all still there but something broke with the index/display of the folders? I just found this discussion that suggests you're not the only one, and there might be a way to recover them by Offloading the app and reinstalling it: Edit: Note that the next comment...

forums.macrumors.com

Edit: I should note (like I did on that last post I linked) that if you use the method of Offloading the app to try to recover the Shortcuts, it'll also delete all of your Automations.

Apple really needs to fix whatever is wrong with Shortcuts syncing. It's so buggy.

 

[NoBoMac]

Have not lost a Shortcut through any/all i*OS updates.

+1 on saving Shortcuts to disk (first link above). I've got my own Shortcut to do this, either full backup or deltas ("save all Shortcuts modified since <date/time>"). First of the month do a full via Automation, every week a delta.

Something to look into: any other Apple devices? Might want to go see on the other device(s) if Shortcut is there. I've seen in the past where a device might have two version of same Shortcut, so need to select the current one to get them in sync.

Can also get wonky if running older version of OS on one device vs other. Seen that when using older MacOS or iPadOS to code things up (bigger screen, better and or real keyboards) and then use on current iOS on phone.

 

[droplink]

Yeah, same here.
Shortcuts are present on my iPad OS 26 and on mac, but will not, under any circumstances it seems sync to the iPhone on iOS26.
No matter how many times I press the sync/unsync button in iCloud settings on any device or unload / uninstall-reinstall the app on the iPhone.

They are just not syncing and I fear we have to wait for a bug fix from Apple.
If it comes, that is.

 

[pk0]

I had probably 10 custom shortcuts and lost all but 2 with one of the early iOS 26 updates. I ended up just re-creating or re-downloading the ones I lost. I only have an iPhone and Apple Watch so no other devices to compare it to.

 

[ManuCH]

I have the opposite problem: I've created dozens of useless shortcuts over the years. Lately I try to delete them, they stay gone for a while, and after a couple of hours they reappear. Only when deleting it from the iPhone *and* from the Mac, they will mostly stay deleted.