Each month, ACF Chat Fridays provides an open forum for the Advanced Custom Fields community, uniting users, developers, and the internal team for a live conversation about the plugin’s features and future direction. The August 1, 2025 session announced the first release candidate for ACF 6.5, which is packed with editor experience improvements for the Flexible Content field. The team also shared a call for feedback via the 2025 Annual Survey and discussed future plans for making ACF Blocks more portable.

Hosted by Iain Poulson, Matt Shaw, and Anthony Burchell.

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Session Recording

Watch the full session in the player below or skip to the highlights in the session summary.

Session Summary

Iain Poulson opened the session with two key announcements. First, the 2025 ACF Annual Survey went live in July 2025. The data provides invaluable insights into how the community uses ACF and WordPress, helping to identify trends in block editor adoption and shape the future of the plugin. Take the ACF Annual Survey here.

The main news was the launch of the first release candidate for ACF PRO 6.5. This release is heavily focused on improving the editing experience for the Flexible Content field, a powerful tool for creating custom page-builder-like layouts. The four cornerstone features of ACF 6.5 include:

  • Rename Layouts: Content editors can now rename individual layouts after adding them to a page, providing crucial context when multiple instances of the same layout type are used.
  • Disable Layouts: A new option allows editors to disable a layout, preventing it from rendering on the front end while preserving its content in the editor. This avoids the need to delete and recreate layouts for temporary changes.
  • Focus Mode: When editing fields within a layout, a new “focus mode” visually highlights the active layout, making it easier to navigate complex pages with many layouts.
  • Expand/Collapse All: Buttons have been added to expand or collapse all layouts at once, simplifying the management of long pages. The team requests that developers who rely on the Flexible Content field to test the release candidate on staging sites. Looking beyond 6.5, future updates include ACF Blocks v3, aimed at creating a more native block editor experience.

Q&A

Questions and answers from the session have been paraphrased for clarity.

Q: Are there plans to make ACF Blocks more portable by defining fields within the block.json file?

A: Yes, this is something we are actively investigating. We understand the benefit of having a block’s fields defined in the same block.json file, which would make blocks self-contained and much easier to share across projects and manage with version control. It would streamline deployment by removing the need to separately import/export field group JSON files.

Q: What are your thoughts on integrating AI into the ACF development workflow?

A: The team is very interested in how AI can create a more seamless and assistive experience. We discussed several potential applications, such as using AI to intelligently suggest field types based on a field name, generate boilerplate field group settings, or diagnose potential schema issues (like duplicate field keys or inefficient field choices). The goal is to enhance workflows without being intrusive. We may schedule a future session dedicated to this topic.

Q: What is the status of adding support for block variations?

A: This is a popular request on our feedback board that we’ve discussed internally. It requires more investigation before we can schedule it on the roadmap, but we encourage users to continue voting for it on the feedback page to help us gauge priority.

Resources & Links

Coming Up on ACF Chat Fridays

Register today for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays. Sessions are typically held on the first Friday of every month. Questions and suggestions for the development team are always welcome.

Register for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays here: https://wpeng.in/acf-chat-fridays/

The list of upcoming sessions is below.

  • September 5, 2025
  • October 3, 2025
  • November 7, 2025
  • December 5, 2025

Tag or DM us on Twitter with suggestions or feedback using #ACFChatFridays.