I don't want the photos I took in 2000 to be at the top of the sort order but the only option is oldest first, Okay for you young kids with not many photos but I got my first Sony digital camera 1998 so have 10's of thousands of photos and I have got through 3 different Mac photo programs Photos, iPhoto, Aperture, Non of the the new programs are better than aperture
iMac 27", macOS 10.15
(1) I agree that as a DAM Library system, Aperture was the best - and yes I miss it also.
(2) The main Photos folder - the one at the top of the left-hand Toolbar, can only be sorted by Oldest first - though when I first click on it it shows the bottom of the group and thus the latest imported photos.
(3) If you select any other folder/album in your library (like I have one to which I move "Family" photos), those folders can be sorted by Title, Oldest and Newest by selecting the View Menu and then Sort.
If you want to be able to sort your entire collection, you could make a Smart Album to contain all your photos and then would be able to sort by those three same criteria.
(1) I agree that as a DAM Library system, Aperture was the best - and yes I miss it also.
(2) The main Photos folder - the one at the top of the left-hand Toolbar, can only be sorted by Oldest first - though when I first click on it it shows the bottom of the group and thus the latest imported photos.
(3) If you select any other folder/album in your library (like I have one to which I move "Family" photos), those folders can be sorted by Title, Oldest and Newest by selecting the View Menu and then Sort.
If you want to be able to sort your entire collection, you could make a Smart Album to contain all your photos and then would be able to sort by those three same criteria.
Create a smart album with this criteria:
That will include all items in your library and you'll be able to sort it any way you'd like:
even manually.
Here's what can be sorted and what can't in a Photos library:
The developers are not here, we are just users. Make sure to send feedback:
Thanks for all the input by knowledgable people. But Apple should pay a little more attention to this. This should be EASY to fix. When I sort by Oldest first in an album it DOES NOT consider the TIME. It's actually hard to figure out what it is doing. But in an album, and in the general library, I want my photos sorted by the EXIF DATE AND TIME. Take several hundred photos and try going through them and you will see what I mean. Please Apple, spend a few hours on this. It should also allow sorting by the embedded photo name, e.g. DSC_3446, since that is serially generated by our cameras. All cameras do this.... This is not rocket science. Sorry for the sarcasm, but this is just hard to believe.
When I sort by Oldest first in an album it DOES NOT consider the TIME. It's actually hard to figure out what it is doing. But in an album, and in the general library, I want my photos sorted by the EXIF DATE AND TIME
Any album I create is sorted by the capture date and time with "Sort by Date". If you are getting different results when sorting albums by the date, Photos may have assigned the wrong time zone to some of your photos,perhaps for photos from different cameras. I have changed the system preferences on my Catalina Mac, so all times will be displayed with the time zone suffix. This way I can easily spot photos, where the time zone has been assigned incorrectly, see: How to display the Date and Time Zone in the Info in Photos in Catalina
Why can I not change the sort order of photos
