A developer seeks to implement custom product sorting in Shopify collections, specifically displaying newest items first and sale items last, for thousands of products across multiple collections.
Manual sorting in Admin panel isn’t scalable for large product catalogs
Liquid templating offers insufficient flexibility for custom reordering logic
Proposed Solution:
Set collections to manual sort mode in Shopify Admin, then use the Admin API to programmatically reorder products. This approach avoids conflicts between default sort options and custom ordering.
Key Considerations:
Mixing manual/API sorting with default sort options can cause conflicts
Liquid alone cannot override sort_by_options
Manual sort mode is required for consistent, predictable results
Alternative: A third-party app (SortWise) was suggested for stores with advanced sorting requirements.
Status: The discussion provides a viable technical path forward, though implementation details remain with the developer.
Summarized with AI on October 23.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
I am a developer that is new the Shopifys ecosystem and have been banging my head for a few days over a solution to this.
It seems that there are a few default options in collection.sort_by_options that give you a limited number of ways to sort the collection. I also know of a manual way to sort these in the Admin panel but there isn’t feasible way to do this for thousands of products for each collection.
The client wants the sort order to be new items displayed first and on sale items to be displayed last. I tried re ordering these in liquid and they don’t really give you a lot to work with. Is it possible for this to be even be done in liquid?
I also looked into the Admin API and it seems possible to reorder them that way but I have concerns about whether or not it would clash with the sort_by_options when it gets displayed. Should all the collections be set to manual for it to work properly?
Hey there! I realize this question is a bit old, but for anyone else finding this thread with advanced sorting needs: we actually built the SortWise app to handle exactly this (and more). It is a perfect solution for any store with advanced sorting needs!
Yes, to fully control product order (e.g., new first, sale last), set collections to manual sort in Shopify Admin. Then use the Admin API to programmatically reorder products. Liquid alone won’t override sort_by_options, and mixing manual/API sorting with default sort options can cause conflicts. Stick with manual for consistent results.