General question about collection sorting using the Star Wars ‘machete order’ as an example. At the minute, it’s only possible to sort collections alphabettically or by release date.
Anyone know of a way of custom sorting a collection without affecting the main library sorting?
This would be possible if more collection sorting options, i.e. fully customisable sorting, were added.
Add my vote for custom collection sorting (instead of just alphabetical or chronological). My issues are the Star Wars movies as well as at the Marvel movies, but this could also be true for Harry Potter with now the “Fantastic Beasts” movies, and anything else that gets prequels after the originals such as Aliens movies, or whatever. I would like an option to sort them different from release date, and more by movie chronology: So for Star Wars my custom sort may be:
The Marvel movies could also be in a different order (there are many sites listing the “correct” order to watch them).
You can already do this using the alphabetical sort order. I have my Star Wars movies in episode order, you just need to edit the item and change the sort order to Star Wars 01, Star Wars 02 (or however you want to label them to get them in order).
Had a few minutes and updated my library to be similar to machete order. This is done just using the “Sort Order” field when you edit the item:
Thanks for the suggestion, but I do understand that changing metadata could affect the sort order. I’d however like to just have a custom sort order in collections and not change the metadata.
The example of star wars is a bit easier than some other shows, but your example misses Rogue One, and would also miss the Solo movie. So let’s say you have the set up as
To insert the missing movies I would either have to change the sort order name for every movie following, or do something like this listed below to insert them:
…
Star Wars 3.1
Star Wars 3.2
…
Not ideal. Marvel movies get even more messy, because I’m not putting Marvel 01, Marvel 02, etc in the sort order, but most names don’t even come close to the letter “M”. So if I’m looking at my whole library for Thor (as opposed to in a collection) I would have to remember to look near the letter “M” instead of “T”. Same for Avengers, Black Panther, etc. It would just be confusing in full library view.
Sucks that this thread went no where I am looking to solve pretty much the same issue with the same two collections lol.
I’m with everyone here. I’ve done it by changing the sort order, but as stated that change where the movie shows up in the main library as well.
I think what everyone is asking for is a custom sort that is managed and tracked with the collection and not the metadata of the items in the collection.
Same. How about a collection specific order that we can arrange by drag and drop? That makes it editable if you wanna change to/from machete order etc.
Or another (alt) sort title field that can only be invoked within collections.
I’m not a programmer so I don’t know how hard that would be, but knowing literally nothing about what it would take to implement, I’d say it couldn’t be that hard, right? 
It is a bit all over the place… The issue I’m having is that changing the sort field doesn’t kick in until I delete the release date of each movie.
As soon as I do that it works. Would like to keep the date as well as putting them in the order I want.
Couldn’t you just make a playlist?
That’s less than ideal. You can’t customize the playlist poster, and it’s just one more place to look for content.
I mean I get that you have to look for it in a different location, but you can definitely set the order of a playlist. That’s the whole point of a playlist.
Can Playlists be shared with other users? If I create a MCU playlist in chronological order by timeline in the universe can I share that? I don’t think so. This then removes the option of playlists for me. I want to create something I can share, and to do that I currently need to create collections.
No they can’t be shared with other users, playlists are personal, and that is why they aren’t a replacement for collections.
The fact that we cannot sort collections are ridiculous. This needs to be a top priority change.
Here, here. I would also like this ability.
I asked for the ability in Emby and it was like I was from another world…
Kev
Replying to add my support for this feature request. I’d live to be able to sort within a collection without it affecting the main library sorting.
I have just been directed here after posting a similar post which I have copied below…
I would like to suggest a new property field for a movie for the purpose to sort items within a collection.
An example of the purpose for this is to allow the sorting of the movies to be in story chronological order inside a collection, yet keep the actual title of the movie for searching and ordering in the library.
Two examples.
First is Solo A Star Wars Story. Within the collection I would like this to appear after episode 3. If I change the Sort Title to Star Wars 3.5 I can achieve this, but it is then incorrectly named in the Library.
Second example is Prometheus. I would like this to appear first in the Alien collection which can be achieved by setting the Sort Title to Alien 0.1, but it is now listed under A within the library when I would like it to be listed under P.
This feature request would require (from a user perspective as I know there will be db changes, etc.) a new field in the properties page to allow the entry, a new item in the drop down of the sort field for a collection and the sorting logic within a collection only as it can be ignored by the library.
The benefit would provide a greater experience for collections while maintaining correct ordering in the library itself.
I personally use collections a lot and they appear at the top of the Movie library by adding an asterisk at the start of the Sort Title of the collection. I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this request.
So I’ve just basically decided to do it this way, as your Solo example. I have my movie library set to hide items that are in collections from the main library view, so it negates the weird sorting order needed for collections. I agree though, a proper solution should be made for it.
I wholeheartedly feel like this should be a pretty straightforward item to add to Plex.
It’s simply adding in a new tag field “Collection Sort” and a new item on the “Advanced > Collection Order” drop down to use that tag to sort by.
Between this post and another one on the same topic, this request has been open for almost 2 years. I’m one of the people that pays to keep the lights on, as are 90% of the other users that have requested this and its starting to feel like we aren’t really being listened too very much.
Just wondering if we can get an answer, either way, from someone official? Would really like to know if this is going to happen or not.
Where do we make feature requests?
