How to reverse sort an array

Swift version: 5.1

Paul Hudson    @twostraws    May 28th 2019

Regular sorting on comparable data is as easy as calling the sort() method, but if you want a reverse sort – e.g. highest to lowest numbers, or Z-A alphabetically – there are two options.

The first is to run a regular sort, reverse that sort, then convert the result to an array. For example:

let numbers = [100, 5, 53, 98, 29]
let reversed1 = Array(numbers.sorted().reversed())

The second option is to provide a custom closure to the sorted() method that sorts the opposite way to the default, like this:

let reversed2 = numbers.sorted { $0 > $1 }

Both of those will result in the array 100, 98, 53, 29, 5.

Available from iOS 8.0

Similar solutions…

• How to sort an array using sort()
• How to loop through an array in reverse
• How to sort the keys of your JSON using Codable
• How to reverse a string using reversed()
• How to convert a multidimensional array to a single-dimensional array

About the Swift Knowledge Base

This is part of the Swift Knowledge Base, a free, searchable collection of solutions for common iOS questions.