ACF JSON not loading?

I’ve used Advanced Custom Fields Pro for many years now. I love the ACF-JSON feature which allows automatically saves your fields into a JSON file. This is wonderful for deployments and automatically synchronises your fields to the production environment.

Today I customised some things directly in the JSON file, and although this changes the fields directly, it does not update the Dashboard UI.

Usually the changes would show up in “sync available”, but since the modified date of the json file (there’s a parameter all the way in the bottom of the file) did not change, ACF does not see the updated fields.

The easy fix

Basically, you have two options. Either you:

• Save a copy of the JSON files and delete all the groups via the UI

Or, my preferred way,

• Change the modified date of the JSON file (increase the number with 1)\

You’ll find the modified date in the bottom of the JSON file. Change it, save the file and ACF will show that a sync is available!