Is there any way to sort sub folders?

[MacAhi]

I've used this tool for a couple of years, and still, sub folders don't sort unless I expand one, close the program then restart it. If I then expand a different folder, all of those sub folders are unsorted (seemingly random sorting) and I have to close the tool and restart it again for that set of folders to sort properly. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I can't find it.

I have the setting 'Folder always sorted alphabetically' checked. I've tried unchecking it too, but there's no difference.

This is on an external, USB connected drive. I don't think it's happening directly on my mac hard drive (but I don't use it as much on that).

[xnview]

MacOS? could you send me some screenshots?

[MacAhi]

Thanks for the response.
Yes MacOS 15.4
I'm not sure why but it seems to be behaving better most of the time. I did capture this before and after shot a couple of days ago, so it can still happen, but I'm not seeing it as consistently now.

(It's like when you go into the doctor and all of a sudden, your symptoms are gone )

If it starts to happen with the previous frequency I'll let you know, but it does seem better. Maybe toggling some setting ended up correcting it. I'm not sure.

[MacAhi]

Hello,
This is still happening and I finally figured out how to duplicate it.

Take a folder and drag-n-drop it into another folder which has subfolders. Do not expand the destination folder first. Expand it after dropping in the other folder. Now when you expand that folder, the subfolders are out of sort.

In the attached example, I created the 'sort testing' folder along with the 2 main subfolders and the #s & Alpha folders days ago. Every time I expanded that folder, everything was properly sorted. Today, I dragged the 'test' folder into the 'sort testing 3' folder, then expanded it and I got the result you see in the attachment.

[xnview]

after restarting XnView, the folder is sorted? the problem is only after copying another folder (with subfolders), right?

[MacAhi]

It happens when moving one folder into another folder (which contains subfolders), which hasn't already been expanded. I don't think it matters how deeply nested it is, that was just my test.

Yes, when XnView is restarted, the folders are sorted properly.

[xnview]

I've tried but can't reproduce. Do you drag&drop from folder view into folder view?

[MacAhi]

Apparently it doesn't happen on a top-level folder. It needs to be at least one level deep. Yes, this is all in the Folder panel.

Steps to reproduce

• Create the test folders (as in the first screenshot). (These don't have to be created through the tool)

• Close and reopen XnView

• Expand the parent folder ('z. test2')

• Without expanding the subfolder, drag 'z. test3' into 'z.test')

• Expand 'z. test'

I also tested this directly on my Mac HD instead of the external drive, and the results are the same.