Sorting in Roon

What is Sorting?

Sorting controls how items in your library are ordered when you're browsing albums, artists, tracks, and more. It determines what you see first, whether that's your most recent additions, an alphabetical list, or a completely random selection.

Sorting only affects display order. It does not change what happens when you press Play. Playback order is controlled separately through play actions.

Sorting

Albums, Artists and Composers

When browsing Albums, Artists, or Composers, click the Sort By dropdown in the top-right corner of the browser. From here you can choose a sort field:

Click the arrow to the left of each Sort By option to toggle between ascending or descending order.

A few practical examples:

1. Sort by Date added to see what you recently added to your library
   
2. Sort by Album title or Artist to browse alphabetically
   
3. Sort by Random to shuffle the display order and rediscover music you might have forgotten about
   

Using Random Sort

The Random sort option displays your library in a shuffled order each time it's applied. This is useful when you want to rediscover music you haven't listened to in a while, when you're not looking for anything specific, or when you just want a different browsing experience. The order may change when you refresh or revisit the view. 

Sorting Tracks and Compositions

The Tracks and Compositions views work a bit differently. Instead of a Sort By dropdown, these views use a gear icon ⚙️ in the top-right corner of the column header row. Click it to toggle which columns are visible. 

The Compositions view offers its own set of columns tailored for classical music, including Composer, Date, Period, Form, and Instrumentation.

Once a column is showing, click its header to sort by that field, and click again to reverse the order.

Customizing Sort Preferences

You can adjust how Roon handles sorting globally by going to Settings > General and scrolling down to Browser Sort Preferences. Options here include:

1. Which date Roon uses when sorting albums (original release date vs. another date)
2. Whether artists are sorted by first name or last name
   
3. Whether composers are sorted by first name or last name
   
4. How compilation albums are sorted (by album title or by artist)
   

These preferences apply across your library. Some views may still have their own sorting behavior.

Troubleshooting

Sorting doesn't seem to change anything.

Make sure you're adjusting the sort in the correct view. Sorting in the Albums browser won't affect what you see in Tracks, and vice versa.

I don't see a Sort By dropdown.

In the Tracks and Compositions views, sorting is controlled through the gear icon and column headers rather than a dropdown menu.

Random order looks the same as before.

Random sort may regenerate its order when you leave and return to the view. If it looks unchanged, try navigating away and coming back.

Still have questions?

Get in touch with our Technical Support team.

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