Hi
You wrote
now set it to sort by name as default in the menu item
I had missed that as I had set the default in the Options Frontend tab -Downloads 'default frontend sort order' as Alphabetical. The Backend sort order was set to 'id descending' and it was those two I have been comparing! So I was not reproducing your test!!
Presume you are using the List All Downloads menu item
If you change a selection on the visible page in jD3.9.5 then when showing the next page it reverts to the order selected in the Menu item. You would like it to stay with the menu order selected on the previous visible page.
Have now tested on jD 3.2.70. It holds the menu setting sort order across pages.
So now I have replicated the problem - sorry for the confusion
Colin