That was a quick turnaround. Which is a good thing, as Apple was able to fix an apparent issue causing problems with sharing older Shortcuts links.
The problem was pretty straightforward: older links meant to share Shortcuts apparently ran into an expiration date. As a result, links shared to Shortcuts older than a week were running into an error message. That message let the user know that the Shortcut had not been found.
The pop-up message, as you can see just below, added that the link may be invalid, or that it had been deleted and it no longer actually linked to a usable Shortcut. At the time, there was no rhyme or reason as to why the links were failing, or a proper fix for the issue.
Earlier today, though, we reported that Apple confirmed it planned on restoring expired Shortcuts links “as soon as possible”, and, indeed, the company has done just that.
As noted today by MacStories‘ Federico Viticci, Apple has apparently fixed the problem:
Apple has begun restoring links to old shortcuts. Some links in the @macstoriesnet Shortcuts Archive are still broken, but a lot of them are active again.https://t.co/MGwB1bRhHD pic.twitter.com/CGp9VsIBkW
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) March 25, 2021
This means that older Shortcuts links posted on sites like Reddit, MacStories, RoutineHub, and others should be functioning again.
It’s good news that Apple was able to fix the problem so quickly.