seems to only happen under specific (currently unknown) conditions, as most other people report it's working as intended
example: after clicking through the "sort" button in the request table, closing the client and restarting, the request table defaults to 'ID /'.
expected: the chosen preference persists in the client indefinitely or until manually changed

This happens for me too.

This is currently the intended behaviour. If you want to change it, this should be a feature request.