Crap... if I want to set the default sorting field for a collection, my only option is to delete the collection and recreate it from scratch?

Try using an alias so you won't have to change your queries then after: https://typesense.org/docs/27.1/api/collection-alias.html#create-or-update-an-alias But yes, you have to recreate the entire collection into a separate one

for now I solved it by updating my preset to use a

sort_by

with value

_text_match:desc,<desiredfield>:desc