ACF Chat Fridays bridge the gap between the Advanced Custom Fields community and the developers behind the plugin. The April 4, 2025 session featured lively discussions on ACF PRO 6.4’s imminent release, block editor enhancements, and real-world challenges faced by users. Participants gained insights into optimizing workflows and future roadmap priorities, directly from the ACF team.

Hosted by Iain Poulson, Matt Shaw, and Phil Johnston.

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Session Recording

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

Session Summary

Iain Poulson kicked off the session by noting that testing was still underway for ACF PRO 6.4 Release Candidate 1, with the team confident the full release would be made available the following week. Indeed, ACF and ACF PRO 6.4.0 are now in full release, with support for storing ACF data on WooCommerce orders when HPOS is enabled, compatibility with WordPress 6.8, and other features and enhancements. For more information, please see the release post.

Future updates will include ongoing refinements to the block editor experience that aim to streamline inline editing and align ACF Blocks more closely with core WordPress block behaviors, such as the ability to create ACF Blocks directly from the plugin’s UI.

Attendees were also reminded to mark their calendars for DE{CODE} 2025, WP Engine’s virtual conference. Taking place on April 15, DE{CODE} 2025 will include an ACF-focused session about transforming chaos into control, ensuring sites remain efficient, scalable, and visually cohesive long after launch.

Q&A

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

Q: How can I add custom classes to the block wrapper in the editor without duplicating markup?

A: While ACF currently doesn’t support direct class additions to editor wrappers, the team is exploring solutions. For now, conditional checks (e.g., is_preview()) can inject front-end-only classes.

Q: Why do ACF-registered post types occasionally disappear, causing 404 errors?

A: This sporadic issue may stem from JSON sync conflicts or caching. Ensure post types are registered via PHP/JSON and avoid database overrides. If encountered, capture a site snapshot pre-fix and contact support.

Q: Can ACF Image fields support focal point selection like core Cover blocks?

A: Not currently, but this is a priority for future updates. Workarounds include using sliders for X/Y-axis values in render templates.

Q: Why doesn’t ACF use the native render property in block.json?

A: ACF’s block rendering relies on its own system for backward compatibility. The team is investigating alignment with core’s render attribute to simplify workflows.

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.

  • May 2, 2025
  • June 6, 2025
  • July 4, 2025
  • August 1, 2025

Tag or DM us on Twitter to let us know you’ll be there. Suggest new topics, let us know what you’d like to see, and send us feedback with #ACFChatFridays on Twitter.