Sorting and Grouping

Once a folder has statuses enabled, its direct children automatically group by status — items sharing a status cluster together, in the order statuses appear within their status set (see Status Sets and Colors). Within a group, items are sorted alphabetically.

It's live

Change an item's status by clicking its dot, and the tree re-sorts immediately — the item moves to sit with everything else sharing its new status. There's no manual "re-sort" step.

It persists

The grouped order isn't recomputed from scratch and forgotten — it's tied to the same status data that's saved in the plugin's data file, so closing and reopening Obsidian (or restarting your machine) shows your folders exactly as you left them.

Scope

Grouping only applies to a folder's direct children — files and subfolders sitting immediately inside it. A subfolder's own contents group according to whichever configuration governs that subfolder (its own, or an inherited one — see Assigning Folders and Defaults), independently of its parent.

Items without a status

If a folder is enabled but a specific item somehow has no resolvable status (rare — usually only during a mid-edit state), it sorts to the end of the group, after every status-bearing item.

Files and folders separately

If a folder assignment has turned statuses off for files or folders (see Applying statuses to files vs. folders), that type sorts as though it had no status at all — alphabetically, as a block below whichever type is still status-driven. With statuses on for files only, for example, files sort by status first, with plain, alphabetically-sorted subfolders underneath. Turn both off and the whole folder just sorts alphabetically.

Truncated groups

A truncated status still takes part in the same sort — its single summary row sits wherever that status would normally rank, exactly as if it were one item with that status.