Sharing Shortcuts on iOS is currently broken, Apple working on a fix

Apple’s Shortcut sharing system via iCloud has stopped working, also breaking thousands of links on websites — tapping them results in a ‘Shortcut Not Found’ error message.

iOS Shortcuts are currently broken, but iOS is working on a fix. (Apple )

Users across the world are facing an odd bug with the Shortcuts app on iOS, which has not only blocked users from sharing them via iCloud, but also caused an error message to show up after trying to open a shared shortcut.

The issue was spotted by MacStories, and a tweet regarding the issue soon found widespread confirmation that Apple's Shortcut sharing system was broken, with several people receiving a ‘Shortcut Not Found' error message. Apple's Shortcuts app enables users to perform advanced automation tasks on their device, which can be set to run on a schedule, or run manually by tapping an icon or asking Siri to perform it for you.

3 years of Shortcuts https://t.co/1rxiu3BRbk URLs are broken on @macstoriesnet right now.

Beyond the 229 shortcuts in the Archive, dozens of blog posts from our Shortcuts coverage have broken links.

Like I said, I hope this is a bug and a fix is coming. pic.twitter.com/1twX70F93Z

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) March 24, 2021

Apple later confirmed the existence of the issue to MacStories, stating they were “aware of an issue where previously shared shortcuts are currently unavailable.” While recently made shortcuts are available to users, older shared shortcuts aren't working and the company added that it was working to restore previously shared shortcuts as quickly as possible.

This is exactly the problem. I have 1000 shortcuts backed up and Apple intelligently decided to make local backups impossible too.

This is like that “what if we unplugged the App Store” bit except it's way too real https://t.co/Oar5b5dCdC

— Matthew Cassinelli (@mattcassinelli) March 24, 2021

While Apple works on a fix for the missing shortcuts, several users are currently unable to access thousands of iOS Shortcuts that are simply inaccessible. Instead, adding a shortcut via iCloud into the Shortcuts app simply results in this error message appearing: “Shortcut Not Found. The shortcut link may be invalid, or it may have been deleted.”

Since Apple doesn't allow users to make local backups of their Shortcuts, with one YouTuber comparing the situation to the old question of ‘what would happen if the App Store was unplugged', stating that Shortcuts disappearing was “way too real”. Other sites with articles that link to old Shortcuts are also broken, so hopefully, Apple is able to fix the issue as soon as possible.