Text replacements not syncing between iPhone and Mac

The short answer

Text replacements sync through iCloud Drive, so it has to be on for both devices, signed in to the same Apple Account. On iPhone, that's Sync this iPhone under iCloud Drive, and on Mac it's Sync this Mac. If both are on and nothing moves, add a new replacement on the iPhone, restart both devices, and update them. Export a backup from your Mac before you try anything drastic. Sync failures can delete entries as easily as they fail to add them.

How syncing is supposed to work

Apple's Mac guide to backing up and sharing text replacements says: set up iCloud Drive on your Mac, iPhone and iPad, sign in to the same Apple Account on each, and a replacement you add on one device "automatically works on your other devices." Apple adds that it works the other way round too.

In practice it's had a rough history. In 2017 Apple told John Gruber that text replacement sync was moving to CloudKit to fix long-running problems. Complaints kept coming anyway. In May 2026 Adam Engst at TidBITS wrote that iCloud syncing "seems to have thrown up its hands" for him, leaving his iPhone with a different set of entries from his Mac.

Step 1: check iCloud Drive on both devices

On iPhone

Apple's iPhone guide covers syncing your personal dictionary on the same page as text replacements. Resetting that dictionary deletes your shortcuts, so this is the setting that carries them:

1. Open Settings and tap your name.
2. Tap iCloud, then See All, then iCloud Drive.
3. Turn on Sync this iPhone.

On Mac

From Apple's guide to setting up iCloud Drive:

1. Open System Settings and click your name at the top of the sidebar.
2. Click iCloud, then Drive. On some versions it's called iCloud Drive.
3. On macOS 13.3 or later, turn on Sync this Mac.

Then check that both devices show the same Apple Account. It's an obvious check, and a work Mac signed in to a different account, or blocked from iCloud by the company, won't sync at all. One Apple Community poster had exactly that, with iCloud blocked on a work Mac.

Step 2: nudge the sync

iDownloadBlog keeps an updated list of fixes for text replacements that won't sync, last revised in December 2025. In order of effort:

1. Make sure every device is online. New entries need an internet connection to sync.
2. Force quit the Settings app on iPhone and System Settings on Mac, then reopen them.
3. Add a new text replacement on the iPhone, see if it reaches the Mac, then delete it. On iPhone, text replacements are under Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement.
4. Restart the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
5. Check Apple's System Status page for iCloud problems.
6. Update every device to the latest iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
7. As a last resort, reset network settings.

Older forum threads add one more observation. In a long Apple Community thread from 2016, some users found sync worked in one direction only, and settled on adding all new shortcuts from one device. That thread is ten years old, but if you see one-way sync today, it's a reasonable way to live with it.

Step 3: back up before anything drastic

Some fixes you'll find online wipe your list. Apple's iPhone guide says Reset Keyboard Dictionary, under Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset, deletes "all custom words and shortcuts." That's a factory reset for your list, not a sync fix.

Before you try either, export your list on the Mac. Select everything in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements and drag it to the desktop. Apple's export steps are the same ones covered in our backup guide. Apple only documents exporting and importing on the Mac, so the Mac is where your backup has to come from.

This matters because sync can spread a loss. In March 2026 a Mac user reported that thousands of entries disappeared after a macOS update, and his iPhone and iPad lost them too. Our guide on text replacements that stopped working after an update covers what to check if that happens to you.

If you give up on iCloud sync

Plenty of people do. If you mainly need your snippets on Macs, a text expander with its own sync is an option:

• Espanso is free and keeps snippets in plain files. Its synchronization docs say you can sync that configuration "using any Cloud Storage service," and name Dropbox, Google Drive and GitHub as examples.
• Typinator Basic is a one-time purchase for macOS only. Its Advanced plan, a yearly subscription, adds iOS.

None of these change how the iPhone keyboard handles Apple's own text replacements. If you need shortcuts on the iPhone, iCloud is still the built-in route.

Summary

1. Turn on iCloud Drive sync on both devices, with the same Apple Account.
2. Add a new replacement on the iPhone to trigger a sync, then restart and update.
3. Export a backup from the Mac before resetting anything.
4. If sync stays broken, manage new shortcuts from one device, or move to a tool with its own sync.