

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Read the onscreen warning, and if you’re happy to proceed, then click ‘Delete.’.

Use the ‘Option+Command+Delete’ keyboard shortcut.Select the item that you want to delete.While this does give you the opportunity to change your mind and recover a file that you sent to the Trash by accident, if there’s a file that you definitely want to see the back of, then you can delete it immediately, rather than simply sending it to the Trash. You’ll then need to either empty the Trash manually, or wait for the Trash to empty automatically (assuming that you’ve set the Trash to empty periodically based on a schedule). When you delete an item, macOS’ default behaviour is to send that item to the Trash, rather than deleting it immediately. When prompted, enter your administrator password.Now you can press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard.Select all the files that you want to delete, and then drag and drop them into the Terminal window.Type the following command into the Terminal, followed by a space – but don’t press the ‘Enter’ key:.Open a new Terminal window (Applications/Utilities/Terminal).If you’re unsure why the Trash is refusing to empty, then you may be able to resolve this problem by emptying the Trash from your Mac’s Terminal: You should now be able to send this file to the Trash, and empty the Trash as normal. Find your username, open its accompanying ‘Privilege’ dropdown menu, and then select ‘Read & Write.’.Click to expand the ‘Sharing & Permissions’ section.If you do decide to go ahead, then you can give yourself permission to delete this file:
#Force empty trash thrugh terminal mac
Whenever your Mac warns that you have insufficient privileges to delete a file, you should pause and question whether you should even be messing around with this file in the first place. Perhaps the file is owned by someone else who shares your machine, or maybe it’s a system file that you really shouldn’t be touching. Often, there’s a good reason why you don’t have permission to delete an item. Give yourself permission: Deleting protected files You should now be able to send this file to the Trash without any issues. If you’re encountering a “file locked” error, then you’ll need to unlock that file before you can delete it: It’s impossible to send a locked file to the Trash.
#Force empty trash thrugh terminal windows
Unlocker: The File Unlocking Utility You Need | Gear up Windows 11 & 10Īfter closing all the applications and processes that were using this file, you should be able to delete the file, as normal. Find the process in question, and then click the little ‘Quit’ icon in Activity Monitor’s upper-left corner. To close a process, open macOS’ Activity Monitor app (Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor). Select the application that’s refusing to close.Select the ‘Apple’ logo in your Mac’s menu bar.You’ll need to close every item that appears in this list.Ĭlosing an application is typically straightforward, but if the application refuses to close then you may need to force quit it:

