How to force empty trash on Mac by means of Terminal Command Remember to use this option only when the above fixes fail to help you to clear out your trash bin. Use third-party utilities There are many third-party utility apps to forcibly empty the Trash folder. To use this item, first drag it out of the Trash. In a moment or two depending on how much was in your Trash , the Trash icon should return to its empty state. Preview found images, documents, videos, emails and recover them with original names and structures.
You could also set the secure way to delete the folder contents as the default way Mac emptied out the trash folder. Note that you won't be able to delete a folder if even one file in it is locked. Although they are great for security, deleting a locked file on Mac can be troublesome. When you simply delete files from any folder, they end up in the Trash can. Now the Mac boots up, empty the Trash.
If this doesn't help open the Trash and look if one or more of the items in the trash have a lock symbol on their icon. Quitting Mail, emptying the Trash, and reopening Mail usually solves the problem. However, if you do not empty out the Trash, these tend to sit there and can be accessible to anyone who snoops around in your system. This Terminal trick should only be used if the other methods don't work. Open Terminal on your Mac.
I tried the Disk Verify and the Repair Permission options, and got a long list of repaired items. Use MacMaster If the above methods don't work, you may want to use the cleaner -to clean the Trash in one click. Then try to delete the file, if the error message appears again, please restart your Mac. Usually, you can delete files and empty trash on Mac by following above steps. . Below is the detailed steps: Step 1 Click on the Trash can icon and hold onto the same in the Dock panel.
Open the terminal, type sudo -s, then type enter, enter your admin password at the prompt, then type enter, then type rm -rf plus one space and drag and drop the folder from the trash to the terminal, then type enter. You need to put the Mac into Recovery mode again, and this time use the command line: csrutil enable. Restart your Mac Firstly, restart your Mac and then try to empty the Trash again. Next, it will open up a terminal in order to run a command. Step 2 When a popup appears saying empty trash, you need to select this option. The second one is the Hard Drives trash folder in the root Now you can try to empty your Trash again. Repair Disk with Disk Utility If the file is corrupted, you need extra effort to delete them permanently from the Trash.
I did like Mike's suggestions a lot, but some of them were over my unlearned head. Sometimes, you thought you have closed all app that are possibly using the file while your Mac thought otherwise. If you have removed certain files, documents and even folders to the trash can, it indicates that you have no more use of these items. The path of each file and folder will appear on the Terminal window. Here we list some conditions and solutions to help you delete unwanted files permanently and. If you want to preview a file in Trash before deleting, you'll need to pull the file out of the bin and double-click it to open it up and preview.
How to empty trash or delete files from Mac: the Basic Steps Believe that many novices don't know how to delete the file or empty Trash on Mac, so before I come to the point, I need to show the basic steps listed as below. After this process all your unwanted folders and files will be deleted which is not possible otherwise. Fortunately, there are a few possible workarounds to dealing with files that resist removal, all completely accessible from within the operating system. The Terminal application usage for force deletion of files from Trash is also a helpful section to check out. Have you deleted some necessary files by mistake? Not sure what this means.
Select all the files and folders from the Trash folder, drag and drop them into Terminal window. When I drag the folder to the desktop, it just duplicates it so I can unlock the one on the desktop, but not the one in the Trash. Locking files is useful for controlling who can access or edit a file. There could be certain instances when you are unable to force empty the trash or can't empty trash Mac. Try the process again with a space. But, as you probably don't want, you can get rid of it in the terminal. If this command didn't work, it might be because you forgot to add a space after the R.