Siri Shortcuts are useful but not everyone has the time, or patience, to create one for their specific use. Fortunately, sharing a Siri shortcut is really easy. Once you find a shortcut that does exactly what you need it to, you can import it. It ought to be backed up with any iPhone backups you take. That said, you can also back up Siri Shortcuts to iCloud with another shortcut.
Back Up Siri Shortcuts
In order to back up Siri Shortcuts to iCloud, you need to add the following shortcut. Simply tap the link on your iPhone, and allow it to open the Shortcuts app. When prompted to, allow the shortcut to be imported.
Backup your shortcuts
Once you’ve imported the shortcut, simply run it and a ZIP file will be created inside your iCloud drive. The file is located at Workflow>Backups. The backup will be dated so if you’ve taken several backups, you will be able to tell which is the most recent.
Restore Siri Shortcuts
Restoring Siri shortcuts is a bit of a long, and somewhat redundant process. You cannot extract the ZIP file on your phone so you need to access iCloud from your desktop browser. Download the ZIP file and extract it. Upload the shortcut files inside the extracted folder to your iCloud drive. Create a custom folder for the shortcuts. You won’t be able to upload them to the Workflow folder.
Once you’ve uploaded all the shortcuts, open the iCloud drive via the Files app on your iPhone and tap to import them.
Backing up a shortcut is a good idea because whoever created it might choose to delete it later. If you’re relying on being able to find and import it again, it may not always work. If you have a backup of it though, you can always add the shortcut back. The shortcut relies on the correction actions being set up and not on a user owned file. This means that so long as you have a copy or backup of a shortcut, you can always add it to any device running iOS 12, and make any edits to it that you want.
Ideally, you can upload the extracted shortcuts to any cloud drive app you like. You only have to use iCloud to store the ZIP file however, some users have been reporting that they are unable to add shortcuts saved to other cloud drives.
