I'm puzzled why I can sort the emails in my Inbox, but I CANT'T sort my main photo library. It's only possible to do so when viewing a smart album. Surely I'm not the one only out there who would appreciate being able to sort photos the way we want.
iMac 27″, macOS 11.7
You can sort pictures in albums and smart albums. You can sort the albums in folders. You can sort sub-folders in folders. Photos is in a very sorted world.
You can't sort the Library view, or the Recents view, or the Imports view because these are not albums. They provide a specific pre-determined view of your Library.
As you say, you can make a smart album with every picture in it that mimics the Library, so you can sort that and have no need to mess with the Library view.
You can sort pictures in albums and smart albums. You can sort the albums in folders. You can sort sub-folders in folders. Photos is in a very sorted world.
You can't sort the Library view, or the Recents view, or the Imports view because these are not albums. They provide a specific pre-determined view of your Library.
As you say, you can make a smart album with every picture in it that mimics the Library, so you can sort that and have no need to mess with the Library view.
As a rule of thumb, if your query begins with 'Why...' it can only be answered by Apple. We have no way of knowing the decision processes that lead to a feature being added or removed.
Best we can suggest is let them know what you want:
The following screenshot shows the possible sort orders for the various views in a Photos library:
Be sure to give your feedback as Yer_Man suggested.
Why can't we sort the main Photos app library?
