Q1. Is it possible to filter post by year?
A1. At the moment, the only way to offer the user of your site a choice of just years would be if you had a custom field with just the years in. In V3 Pro addon (we hope to release this next month), you will have the option to add custom form filters, which may well allow you to do as you want.

Q2. Is there a way to separate sort control?
A2. We have received feature requests to allow the one form to be broken into parts to be placed (and styled) in different places (and differently styled) on the page.

We have taken those requests on board for our forthcoming V3 (which we hope to release in June). For example, you might have a form in WooCommerce that has a Search Box (text field), a Sort Order drop down, and then other fields (Product Categories, Product Tags, Variations, etc). You will be able to place the Search Box in the header, and the Sort Order above the products, and the rest of the form in the sidebar.

But, that is not possible right now.

V3 is getting very close. Some time in the New Year we hope.

We found we needed to add a grid/layout editor to the plugin, and this has taken longer than expected. We have now released that as a separate (free) plugin:

https://support.searchandfilter.com/forums/topic/custom-layouts/

But we are still a few months away, sorry.