Default sorting in Angular Material - Sort header

Question

You're mistaking matSortStart for matSortDirection.

Try this:

<table matSort (matSortChange)="sortData($event)" matSortActive="name" matSortDirection="asc" matSortDisableClear>

https://stackblitz.com/edit/angular-defaultsort?file=src/app/sort-overview-example.html

matSortStart can be used to reverse the cycle used when sort (e.g. when the user clicks to sort, it starts at desc instead of asc).

Edit: Thanks Ben for providing an updated example

You can programmatically sort the table by invoking the sort(Sortable) method of the data source. Assuming you've got a dataSource component property for the data source:

// to put next to the class fields of the component
@ViewChild(MatSort) sort: MatSort

// to put where you want the sort to be programmatically triggered, for example inside ngOnInit
this.sort.sort(({ id: 'name', start: 'asc'}) as MatSortable);
this.dataSource.sort = this.sort;

@ViewChild(MatSort) sort: MatSort;

this.dataSource.sort = this.sort;

const sortState: Sort = {active: 'name', direction: 'desc'};
this.sort.active = sortState.active;
this.sort.direction = sortState.direction;
this.sort.sortChange.emit(sortState);

should work. demo

And to show sorting direction arrow, add next css (workaround)

th.mat-header-cell .mat-sort-header-container.mat-sort-header-sorted .mat-sort-header-arrow {
    opacity: 1 !important;
    transform: translateY(0) !important;
}

Update for Material (tested with v7.3):

@ViewChild(MatSort) matSort: MatSort;

private someMethod(): void {
  this.matSort.sort({ id: 'columnName', start: 'asc', disableClear: false });
}

This will also update the mat-sort-header's arrow without any workaround