When I open the recent files view in Nautilus, it shows all files sorted descending by file name rather than by last access time. This contradicts the main idea of the recent files view, which is, to give an easy access to recently used files. Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the sort criteria in the view, as the row titles are disabled as you can see in the screenshot below:
As you see in the picture the files are sorted by name (descending): V, T, T etc...
How can I change the sort criteria to last access time? Is this a bug? By the way, I am using Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 with Nautilus 3.24.1.
So that pane is intended not to be sortable, as evidenced here on the bug-tracker, and that is a bug.
Is it possible that you have accessed your files in that order? I'm running a later version of Nautilus than in the ticket, 3.24-1-1, where-in the Recent Files pane is definitely sorting via most recently accessed at the top.
For your version try clicking the menu button, and setting the "last modified" and "last accessed" fields as visible, and then sorting by those. You should be able to sort it yourself for this version, but a later version will do this automatically.
Hope that helps!