when in a battle, you can click the auto-sort thingy in your inventory and it will sort normally, though moving items manually gives the 'you can't manage your inventory while in battle!' popup as usual.

I believe it is done this way because auto sorting is restricted to just literally automatically moving your items around in your Inventory, positionally wise.

Whereas actually being able to click on an item and move it allows you to Equip/Un-Equip items (it's the same script in the backend). So in order to prevent players from changing their Pet's Equipment during battles, there's just a blanket check on that script to block moving items while in battles.

ahh gotcha! ty for responding (: