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[Enhancement]: Sort Title / Group series without collapse #701

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opened 2026-04-24 23:17:30 +02:00 by adam · 1 comment
adam commented 2026-04-24 23:17:30 +02:00
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Originally created by @CallMeTerdFerguson on GitHub (Oct 17, 2022).

Describe the feature/enhancement

I'd love to have the ability to (optionally) specify a "sort title" for books/podcasts so that I can change the ordering of books in the shelf when sorted by title without changing the actual title for the purposes of display or matching. Plex has a feature like this you can compare to but in essence the sort title would only be used for sorting alphabetically if it exists, otherwise the title would be used as normal. The reason for this is so you can group/order items chronologically, or arbitrarily based upon criteria that make sense to the organizer, when the titles are inconsistent or otherwise belong in a specific order but don't follow that order alphabetically. Alternatively, a simpler to implement solution that is only marginally less flexible may be just to add the ability to tell the bookshelf to sort titles that are in a series as a series without collapsing the series into a single entry when the "collapse series" toggle is on (which would obviously require a rename of that label).

A couple of examples of where this would be useful are below:
Robert Bevan has a series called D6 series, the titles of which are D6, 2D6, 3D6, etc. As things work now, 2D6 and on are appropriately grouped together and in appropriate order when sorted alphabetically but D6 is off alone in the D's, even though it is, implicitly, 1D6. Being able to provide "1D6" as the sort title would place it in the correct location. Likewise, nearly any series which uses roman numerals to number is currently sorted in an alphabetically "correct" fashion but in a logically incorrect fashion once it goes beyond 8 books. Again, being able to specify a sort title using arabic numerals without changing the book title would allow those of us who are particular about the sorting of our shelves to achieve "proper" order.

Originally created by @CallMeTerdFerguson on GitHub (Oct 17, 2022). ### Describe the feature/enhancement I'd love to have the ability to (optionally) specify a "sort title" for books/podcasts so that I can change the ordering of books in the shelf when sorted by title without changing the actual title for the purposes of display or matching. [Plex has a feature like this](https://support.plex.tv/articles/201272763-edit-details/) you can compare to but in essence the sort title would only be used for sorting alphabetically if it exists, otherwise the title would be used as normal. The reason for this is so you can group/order items chronologically, or arbitrarily based upon criteria that make sense to the organizer, when the titles are inconsistent or otherwise belong in a specific order but don't follow that order alphabetically. Alternatively, a simpler to implement solution that is only marginally less flexible may be just to add the ability to tell the bookshelf to sort titles that are in a series as a series *without* collapsing the series into a single entry when the "collapse series" toggle is on (which would obviously require a rename of that label). A couple of examples of where this would be useful are below: Robert Bevan has a series called D6 series, the titles of which are D6, 2D6, 3D6, etc. As things work now, 2D6 and on are appropriately grouped together and in appropriate order when sorted alphabetically but D6 is off alone in the D's, even though it is, implicitly, 1D6. Being able to provide "1D6" as the sort title would place it in the correct location. Likewise, nearly any series which uses roman numerals to number is currently sorted in an alphabetically "correct" fashion but in a logically incorrect fashion once it goes beyond 8 books. Again, being able to specify a sort title using arabic numerals without changing the book title would allow those of us who are particular about the sorting of our shelves to achieve "proper" order.
adam added the enhancement label 2026-04-24 23:17:30 +02:00
adam commented 2026-04-24 23:17:32 +02:00
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@advplyr commented on GitHub (Sep 9, 2023):

I want to add a sort title field but there are some questions and edge cases to solve for first.
@sandreas described how he fills out the sort title for books in https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/issues/787#issuecomment-1508360685 with the full series name and sequence preceding the title.

  1. We will want Abs to automatically populate this title sort field so we need to define some logic on how it is populated.
    • If a book has multiple series how do we know which series to choose?
    • When the user manually edits this field we need a way for the scanner to know not to overwrite it.
  2. We currently have a server setting to allow ignoring prefixes when sorting (i.e. "the"). This is an additional column in the database that gets updated when you edit the list of prefixes to ignore. I think if we add a sort title column we will want this to replace the ignore prefix column. I'm not quite sure how to handle that
  3. You mention the sort title to be used when sorting alphabetically which makes sense. Would we then have an alphabetical sort and a regular title sort option? In the case of the book Xenocide this would probably have the sort title of Enders Saga 3 - Xenocide so it would show up in the E's when sorting alphabetically. If we kept a regular title sort option then using that would put the book in the X's. I'm not sure if that makes sense.
@advplyr commented on GitHub (Sep 9, 2023): I want to add a sort title field but there are some questions and edge cases to solve for first. @sandreas described how he fills out the sort title for books in https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/issues/787#issuecomment-1508360685 with the full series name and sequence preceding the title. 1. We will want Abs to automatically populate this title sort field so we need to define some logic on how it is populated. - If a book has multiple series how do we know which series to choose? - When the user manually edits this field we need a way for the scanner to know not to overwrite it. 2. We currently have a server setting to allow ignoring prefixes when sorting (i.e. "the"). This is an additional column in the database that gets updated when you edit the list of prefixes to ignore. I think if we add a sort title column we will want this to replace the ignore prefix column. I'm not quite sure how to handle that 3. You mention the sort title to be used when sorting alphabetically which makes sense. Would we then have an alphabetical sort and a regular title sort option? In the case of the book `Xenocide` this would probably have the sort title of `Enders Saga 3 - Xenocide` so it would show up in the E's when sorting alphabetically. If we kept a regular title sort option then using that would put the book in the X's. I'm not sure if that makes sense.
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Reference: starred/audiobookshelf#701
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