ACF Chat Fridays give the Advanced Custom Fields community a chance to hear directly from the team behind the plugin. In the May session, Iain Poulson, Matt Shaw, Anthony Burchell, April, and Phil Johnston hosted an open Q&A focused on real-world ACF workflows, including cleanup of leftover field data, better ways to inspect large field group setups, and how the new WP-CLI foundation could support future developer tools.

Hosted by Iain Poulson, with Matt Shaw, Anthony Burchell, April, and Phil Johnston.

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Session Recording

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

Session Summary

Iain Poulson opened with a quick recap of ACF 6.8, including Abilities API integration, experimental schema.org support for JSON-LD output, and the new WP-CLI command for ACF JSON workflows. He also highlighted WP Engine’s DE{CODE} event, which includes an ACF-focused session with deeper demos of the 6.8 release.

Most of the session focused on live Q&A from the community.

The main discussion centered on how developers can clean up leftover or “ghosted” data in the database when ACF fields are changed, removed, renamed, or replaced over time.

The team also explored a feature request around making field groups easier to inspect from the main Field Groups admin screen. Nic Winn shared a custom internal tool that adds columns showing field names, field types, and return formats directly in the field group list table, helping developers understand large ACF setups without opening every field group manually.

The session closed with a preview of areas the team is exploring next, including using AI to make field group and data model creation faster and less repetitive.

Recap of ACF 6.8

The session began with a short recap of ACF 6.8.

Iain highlighted the release’s major AI-adjacent features, including integration with the WordPress Core Abilities API. This allows ACF to work with tools such as the WordPress MCP adapter, making it possible for AI agents and developer tools to interact with ACF-powered sites in new ways.

The team also revisited ACF’s experimental schema.org support, which can output custom field values as structured JSON-LD in page source. The goal is to make field data easier for Google, AI crawlers, search tools, and other machine-reading systems to understand.

ACF 6.8 also introduced native WP-CLI support for ACF JSON workflows, including commands for syncing, importing, and exporting JSON field group configuration.

Cleaning Up Leftover Field Data

A major topic in the session was how to deal with leftover or orphaned ACF data in the database.

Nic Winn asked about the best process for cleaning up old field data when fields are changed, removed, renamed, or replaced over time. This can happen when a field name changes, when a field type is tested and later replaced, or when content models evolve during active development.

Iain explained that this is a known pain point. For example, if a field is renamed, the old post meta or user meta may still exist in the database under the previous field name. That data is no longer connected to the new field configuration, which can leave behind orphaned records.

Matt Shaw added that support sometimes helps users build SQL queries for these cases, but the process is still relatively manual today.

The team discussed how ACF could eventually help detect or surface this kind of data. Possible future approaches included:

  • warning users when renaming a field could orphan existing data
  • helping migrate data from an old field name to a new one
  • or providing inspection tools to show which fields are actually in use.

Possible WP-CLI Tools for Field Inspection

The cleanup discussion naturally led into WP-CLI.

Iain noted that because ACF 6.8 introduced a native WP-CLI foundation, future commands could potentially help developers inspect and clean up field data.

One idea was a CLI command that could show which fields in a field group actually have data across a site and which fields have never been used. That kind of command could help developers identify stale fields, unused field groups, or leftover data before deciding what to clean up.

Anthony Burchell was especially interested in the idea, noting that the new CLI architecture makes these kinds of tools more realistic to build in the future.

Field Group List Table Feature Request

Nic also shared a custom workflow improvement his team uses on the ACF Field Groups admin screen.

He added extra columns to the field group list table showing the fields inside each field group, along with their field types and return formats. This lets his team quickly see field names, whether fields return IDs, labels, arrays, or objects, and what types of data are inside each group without clicking into every field group.

The team saw clear value in this, especially for large ACF builds with many field groups.

Phil Johnston summarized the benefit: instead of opening a field group, expanding a field, and checking the return format manually, the information is visible directly in the list table.

Iain also noted that this surfaced a related improvement: the Field Groups search screen could potentially search inside fields, not just field group titles. For example, if a developer knows a field name but not which field group contains it, search could return the relevant field group.

Working with Large ACF Setups

The discussion also touched on the challenges of managing large ACF setups.

Nic described a multisite environment with many field groups and multiple developers. In that kind of setup, being able to quickly scan field names, field types, and return formats can save a lot of time when building templates or debugging output.

The team discussed how ACF users often create large numbers of field groups, especially when using clone fields or building reusable component-style field groups. In those cases, naming conventions help, but better filtering, categorization, and field-level search could make the admin experience much easier.

AI-Assisted Field Group Creation

Toward the end of the session, Iain shared a preview of an area the team is exploring: using AI to help create field groups and data models.

He described the example of building a car dealership website. Instead of manually creating every field for a car post type, AI could suggest a useful set of fields, such as make, model, year, and other car details. Developers could then accept, edit, or refine those suggestions rather than starting from scratch.

The goal would not be to remove developer control, but to reduce repetitive setup work and make it faster to create structured field groups.

Q&A

Questions and answers from the session may have been edited for clarity.

Q: What is the best way to clean up leftover or ghosted ACF data when fields are changed or removed?

A: Today, this is mostly a manual process. If a field has been renamed, removed, or replaced, the old meta records may still exist in the database. In some cases, developers can clean this up with SQL queries, and ACF support may be able to help construct the right query. The team recognizes this as a real pain point and has ideas on the roadmap for better detection, inspection, and possible cleanup workflows.

Q: Could ACF warn users when renaming a field might orphan existing data?

A: The team discussed this as a possible future improvement. ACF could potentially detect when existing records use the old field name and warn the user before the rename happens. It could also potentially offer a way to move or reconnect the existing data.

Q: Could WP-CLI help inspect or clean up unused ACF data?

A: Potentially, yes. ACF 6.8 introduced native WP-CLI support for ACF JSON workflows, and the team discussed how future commands could help inspect field usage. For example, a command could show which fields in a field group have data and which appear unused.

Q: Is there currently a native tool that lists all used ACF fields and their data?

A: Not currently in ACF core. Nic described having built a custom internal tool to display field information, but the team agreed that better field inspection tools could be useful, especially for larger sites.

Q: Can the Field Groups admin screen show more information about the fields inside each group?

A: Not by default today, but this was discussed as a useful feature request. Nic shared a custom implementation that adds columns for field names, field types, and return formats directly to the field group list table. The team saw value in the idea, especially for developers building templates from existing field groups.

Q: Could field group search include fields inside the groups?

A: The team discussed this as a related improvement. Iain suggested that searching for a field name should potentially return the field group that contains it, instead of only searching field group titles.

Q: Are the new WP-CLI commands only for ACF JSON?

A: In ACF 6.8, yes. The initial native WP-CLI command focuses on ACF JSON workflows, including importing, exporting, and syncing JSON field group configuration. The team described this as a foundation that could support more CLI functionality in the future.

Q: How could AI help with future ACF workflows?

A: The team is exploring ways AI could assist with creating field groups and data models. For example, when building a car dealership site, AI could suggest common fields for a car post type, allowing developers to start from a useful draft instead of manually creating every field.

Resources & Links

ACF 6.8 Release Post
ACF Chat Fridays April Recap
Abilities API Integration
Schema.org
ACF Local JSON
WP-CLI for ACF JSON

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