Previously mentioned in our Supercharge Advanced Custom Fields article, we featured ACF Tools – a browser extension that helps to speed up your ACF workflow and a free alternative to “ACF Theme Code Pro”. Today, we’re going to look a little deeper at it and some of its recent improvements.
Installation
Before you do anything, you’re going to need to install the browser extension. This is available for:
Once installed, you should see a small “A” icon in your extensions bar. This button actually has no function (although this is going to change in a future release), so don’t worry that it doesn’t do much when you click it.
Functions
The extension has three principal functions:
- Copy ACF field code in just one click.
- Quickly look up field names when editing pages.
- Open field type documentation with one click.
All of these are super useful, but number 1 is well and truly a game changer. Let’s take a look at each function in a little more detail.
Copy ACF Field Code (one click!)
Head over to your ACF Field groups in the WordPress back-end and click in to a field that you would like to copy.
When you hover over a field group, you will now see a ‘Copy code’ button and additionally a ‘Copy code with sub fields’ button if applicable.
The code produced is simple and clean. The developer is also improving this over time, recently adding some basic security by escaping fields.
It’s very simple, but very powerful and quick. Variables are automatically named very sensibly and if you need to edit the markup a little to your taste, then this is easy. Overall this will be a huge timesaver for regular users of Advanced Custom Fields.
Look Up Field Names
When you are in a post edit screen, an ‘i’ icon will now appear next to the metabox name. Hovering over this will show the field name and clicking it will copy the field name – handy!
Open Field Type Documentation
If you’re anything like us then you will refer to the (excellent) ACF docs regularly whilst building sites. ACF Tools adds a link to the field name in the field editing screen; click this and it takes you straight to the relevant page in the ACF docs – neat.
What are you waiting for?!
ACF Tools is truly a great (free!) alternative to “ACF Theme Code Pro”. We love that it’s being rapidly developed and that it lives as a browser extension, rather than another plugin. If you haven’t tried it yet, then we highly recommend that you do.
Have you tried it yet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.