Having spells and monster sorted alphabetically by default is very annoying. I find myself constantly clicking to sort them my spell level and CR respectively. I imagine most people use the lists this way. For example I commonly want to search for some creatures to add to an encounter and want to see a list of creatures between say CR 1 /2 and CR  3 and pick a few. If I know the name of a monster I just type the first few letters in the search box, so having the list sorted alphabetically is never something I use.

Could the default sort order be set as CR and Spell Level etc?

There is never any point in asking if there is any news. The first “news” you will ever get is when something has already been implemented. In this case, if there had been any news, you would already be able to personalize your default sorting settings. Since you cannot, you can rest assured in the knowledge that there has been no news.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/news-announcements

Quote from Hapycamper >>

Any news on this?

I'd LOVE to have "My Encounters" default to a "recently edited" first order...  I'm ALWAYS clicking on the resort by recent edit.  (I don't remember a time where I used alphabetical...)

Ugh. I guess I'll have to start naming my encounters "ZZZZ - Goblin ambush",  "ZZZY - Bandit camp",  "ZZZX - Bugbear dance" ....