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How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin

How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin

Posted August 27, 2010 at 6:00pm by iClarified
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These are instructions on how to force empty your Mac OS X Trash Bin if some items won't delete.

You may run into instances when an item in your Trash Bin prevents it from being emptied. For example, you might see a message like, The operation can't be completed because the item "" is in use.

In this situation first make sure that any application that could be using the item is closed and if possible restart the computer. If the Trash Bin still won't empty then continue follow thing these instructions.
How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin


How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin

How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin

Step One
Launch Terminal from your Applications:Utilities folder
How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin

Step Two
Type rm -rf ~/.Trash/* then press enter.
How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin

Step Three
Now reopen your Trash Bin and you will see that all files have been removed successfully
How to Force Empty Your Mac Trash Bin
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Comments (13)
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Anarie
Anarie - October 25, 2015 at 4:27pm
Excellent, worked for me. I was trying to delete MS Office 2011 for Mac and some files were lingering around (typical MS crap) after uninstalling it with AppCleaner.
Martin Farrell
Martin Farrell - June 14, 2013 at 8:16am
#WINNER! Easy and works. Thank you.
Tyler
Tyler - May 23, 2013 at 7:57pm
The command doesn't work for files that are locked. i had to manually goto each file and unlock it to delete it.
Ranjani Prasad
Ranjani Prasad - March 10, 2013 at 3:31pm
ur the best..!!! others were giving sudo mumbo jumbo..!
Jefferson Souza
Jefferson Souza - February 23, 2013 at 9:18pm
Works like a charm to me! Many thanks!
Nick Reeder
Nick Reeder - February 15, 2013 at 10:12pm
That was AWESOM!!! Thanks a bunch.
jesse alvarez
jesse alvarez - February 9, 2013 at 12:37am
this really worked for me!! thank you!
laurence
laurence - January 20, 2013 at 4:36pm
no really... it just says these files can not be erased...help, anyone, plz?
thereal
thereal - August 28, 2010 at 2:54am
This is entirely unnecessary. You just need to go to the Finder menu in the menu bar and hold Option while clicking "Empty Trash…".
Souf
Souf - August 28, 2010 at 9:12am
Hahaha was going to say the same thing
t11chb
t11chb - August 28, 2010 at 11:36am
Didn't know that, thanks guys
Perymgael
Perymgael - September 16, 2010 at 8:10am
After empting the trash, if there are few files in the trash I use "Secure Empty Trash" and he will delete everything.
Nancy
Nancy - July 22, 2012 at 12:06pm
This did not work for me. Neither did the Terminal script which in the past has worked.
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