This question ranks highly in the search engine, so I would like to share a method how resolve field groups being stuck on “Awaiting Save”.
- From Field Groups > Tools, export all field groups as JSON to my Downloads folder.
- Trash all field groups. I also deleted all field groups permanently, but this may be unnecessary.
- Delete all stray JSON in the
/acf-json folder.
- Import the JSON file.
How I think it happened
At first, I told ACF to save JSON to a theme subfolder: get_stylesheet_directory() . /acf-json. Next, I added two new field groups and saved them. However, later on I changed my mind, and added a second, conflicting PHP file, which told ACF to save local JSON to /mu-plugins/acf-json. However, I forgot to create the /mu-plugins/acf-json folder, which meant I was telling ACF to write JSON somewhere non-writable: a directory which didn’t exist.
A couple weeks pass before I get to work this project again. I had not though much about the local JSON, until I was ready to commit the finished field group. However, I noticed that updates to the field groups were no longer showing in the version control panel in Visual Studio Code. After digging around in the theme and the mu-plugins folder, I deleted the second, conflicting PHP file. Nevertheless, even after removing the reference to the non-existent folder, ACF was not able to save local JSON to the theme. All field groups, even brand-new ones, were stuck at “Awaiting Save”. It seemed like the only way to save the field groups would be to start over: export to JSON, delete all, then import from JSON.
