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TestFlight Sort Order
Zac Hall (July):
Apple just updated TestFlight for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more. The new version, 4.3, introduces “a search field to quickly find apps.”
But when Apple implemented this change, they also changed the sort order of the list of apps you’re registered to test. Starting with this update, the list is sorted in alphabetical order. For as long as I can remember — perhaps dating back to when TestFlight was a third-party utility — the list was ordered by recency. The most recently updated app was at the top; the oldest at the bottom. Sorting by recency is really the only sort order that makes sense when you’re registered for dozens (or more) of apps. For me, trying to see if there is an update to a new app whose name starts with U now requires scrolling through over 100 items.
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Also, if I consider the broader view, this really speaks to how much we’ve lost in terms of UI vocabulary. For decades, any list of items with names and dates could be sorted by name or date, ascending or descending, through the standard use of clickable headers at the top of every list. This was true for almost any such list in any app, on any platform — Mac, Windows, Unix, Amiga, whatever. This was just basic GUI stuff.
[…]
iOS in 2007 introduced a simplified UI vocabulary that omitted many of these baseline GUI features. That seemed like a reasonable trade-off for a device with a 3.5-inch display and fat fingers as the only input device. But then iOS became popular and Apple stopped bringing the richer UI vocabulary of the Mac to iOS[…]
And it starting bringing iOS limitations to the Mac.
It certainly shouldn’t have taken until July 2026 to be able to search in TestFlight, either. And being able to search, and see the results sorted alphabetically, shouldn’t mean you can no longer view the full list sorted by recency.
Whatever is going on with this sort order, it isn’t affecting everyone. John Siracusa, amongst many others, has the same problem I do — his list is now alphabetical, and it’s driving him nuts too. Ryan Booker, amongst many others, still has his list sorted by recency.
John Gruber (September):
For both of us, yesterday’s v4.3.1 update fixes the bug.
But there should still be more sort options.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-16): John Voorhees:
Returning to reverse chronological order may seem like a small thing, but it’s made a world of difference in keeping up with the apps I test.
Search was near the top of my list of TestFlight wishes for years, and its addition made a meaningful difference to the app’s usability. But I’ve had a lot of TestFlight wishes over the years that are scattered across multiple articles, so I thought I’d share what else I’d like Apple to tackle with TestFlight[…]
