Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.
- Mac Salad For Trash Plates
- Can't Delete Trash Mac
- Empty Trash For Mac
- Better Trash For Mac
- Can't Empty Trash Mac
- Better Trash For Mac
Method 4: Mac Trash Recovery Software. A third option and one that is sometimes the best choice is to use data recovery software to locate and recover your deleted file or files. If you have tried the steps above and have not been able to recover the missing files, recovery software may be. Here we cover the reasons why you cannot empty trash on Mac and how to empty trash. In addition to this, we will also discuss a fantastic Mac cleaning utility software that helps optimize Mac. For advanced users who are comfortable using Terminal, we can use a command to force empty trash on Mac.
* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.
Find out how much storage is available on your Mac
Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.
Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.
- A step-by-step guide on how to recover data that has been accidentally lost from empty Trash on Mac – Recoverit (IS) for Mac: Step 1 Select Recovery Mode Once you have downloaded Recoverit (IS) for Mac and installed it on your computer, the next step is to launch it. Select the ‘Trash.
- Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for MAC PRO ' Trash Can ' at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
The Trash is a special container on the Mac Dock where you put the icons you no longer want to hang around on your hard drive(s). Got four copies of Letter to the Editor re: Bird Waste Issue on your hard drive? Drag three of them to the Trash. To put something in the Trash, just drag its icon onto the Trash icon and watch it disappear.
Manage storage on your Mac
The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.
Store in iCloud
Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:
- Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
- Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimized) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
- Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.
Mac Salad For Trash Plates
Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.
Optimize Storage
Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.
- Automatically remove watched movies and TV shows. When storage space is needed, movies or TV shows that you purchased from the iTunes Store and already watched are removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a movie or TV show to download it again.
- Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
- Don't automatically download attachments. Mail downloads an attachment only when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.
Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.
Empty Trash Automatically
Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.
Reduce Clutter
Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.
You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.
Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books.
Where to find the settings for each feature
The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.
- If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimize Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings. - In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage.
- In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
- If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Files. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.”
In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Advanced. Optimize Storage selects “Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows.” - In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimize Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.
Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”
Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space
With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:
- Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
- Reminds you to delete used app installers
- Removes old fonts, languages, and dictionaries that aren't being used
- Clears caches, logs, and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed
How to free up storage space manually
Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:
- Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device.
- Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you might no longer need.
- Move files to an external storage device.
- Compress files.
- Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Trash mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.
Learn more
- The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps might show storage categories such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free, or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
- When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file frees up only the space required by any data you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
- If you're using a pro app and Optimize Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.
Can't Delete Trash Mac
Summary
Putting items into Trash is never the ending of permanent or secure deletion. Emptying your Trash on Mac thoroughly is the key. This post lists 6 solutions to empty your Mac Trash, even when the item is in use or locked.
Empty Trash For Mac
Trash is the trash. It still gives the opportunity to get back the deleted items within it.
Thus, if you really want to delete some items permanently and thoroughly, you need to empty your Trash that won't delete.
That is the point of today, how to empty Trash on Mac.
In this page, you will learn about 6 ways of emptying your Trash on Mac, whether the items you want to empty is in use, or locked.
Protecting your privacy and freeing up space can be done here.
Part 1: How to empty Trash on Mac fast and securely
Getting a fast and secure Trash empty is very easy.
Step 1: Click and hold the 'Trash' icon in the Dock.
Step 2: Select 'Empty Trash' in the popup.
Here, you have finished a fast empty of Trash.
However, in this way, the items just disappear in your eyes, but they files inside are not actually erased. They still occupy the space in the system until they are overwritten by something else.
In another word, the empty data in Trash can be recovered with some data recovery software.
For getting an empty that won't recover, Apple launches Secure Empty Trash.
Secure Empty Trash is an option before Mac El Capitan (Mac OS X v10.6.8).
Step 3: For running Secure Empty Trash, you need to hold down the 'command' key and click 'Trash', and 'Empty Trash' will change to 'Secure Empty Trash'. Just select it.
However, Apple states Secure Empty Trash that the 'Secure Empty Trash' feature may not securely delete files placed in the Trash Description.
They use the word, may.
As a result, it removes the feature in Mac OS X v10.6.8 and later.
Apple still leaves the permanent empty of Trash on Mac to our users.
Then, how to empty Trash on Mac permanently?
Move the next part to seek for the solution.
Part 2: How to permanently empty Trash on Mac
Here, for getting a permanent empty of Trash on Mac, you need the third-party apps to help you.
Apeaksoft Mac Cleaner is the app exactly.
- It thoroughly and completely empties Trash and stops from being recovered.
- It safely removes junk or unnecessary files from Mac in one click.
- It permanently erases data on all versions of Mac, like Yosemite, El Capitan, High Sierra, Mojave, etc.
- It cleans email attachments, system log/cache files, unneeded iTunes backup and unnecessary app localization.
- It scans and removes large and old files quickly.
- It duplicates videos, music, images, documents and other data on Finder.
- It can help you uninstall not commonly used apps to free up more space.
- It cleans Mac cache histoy, download history/files, search logs, cookies, login longs, etc. on Safari to protect your privacy.
Get the steps to use it to empty your Trash permanently.
Step 1: Run Mac Cleaner
Free download, install and run this software on your Mac. It will detect your Mac system status automatically, where you can view all data type and basic information about Mac.
Step 2: Scan data
In the main interface, select the data that you want to empty in Trash from the left pane, and 'Scan' to scan the data selected. The scanning process will take a while.
Step 3: Clear data permanently
When the scanning process ends, you can see the selected items displayed in such categories as like 'Videos', 'Music', 'Images', 'Documents' and 'Other'. Checkmark them and click 'Clean' to clear the data permanently.
Step 4: Check empty
Including your actual email address or phone number.Scammers try to steal serial numbers and other private information by posing as Adobe employees. New forum link to the information on how to find your serial numberLost information- page has links to programs to find an installed serial number in Mac or Windows- when you find your serial number(s) write them down and put in a desk drawerFor anyone else reading this.Never post private information on a public forum. Cs6 master collection keygen for mac.
After the empty process is complete, you can download Mac data recovery programs to check if they can recover.
Part 3: Force empty Trash on Mac when data are in use or locked
The above two ways enable you to empty Trash normally. However, when you get the following message pop-ups when you intend to empty Trash, you need to turn to the following 4 solutions for help.
'This operation can't be completed because the item XX is in use.'
'The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003)'.
Or error code – 8072/50/43/36, etc.
Force empty Trash on Mac with Option key (Data locked)
Option is magic when you want to empty Trash which contains locked data.
Step 1: Press and hold the Trash icon in the Dock. The context menu for Trash will display.
Better Trash For Mac
Step 2: Press and hold the 'Option' key or the 'Shift' option keyboard combination, and select 'Force Empty Trash'.
Then the locked files will be overridden. Check this post if you want to delete downloads on iPhone.
Force empty Trash in Safe Mode (data are in use)
If your Mac says that the file is in use, and you cannot empty Trash, you can take the following measures:
- 1. Quit any app that may be using the file, then empty Trash.
- 2. Restart your Mac, because the files may be used in a background process.
- 3. Start up Mac in Safe Mode.
Step 1: Open or restart Mac, and press 'Shift' and you will see Apple logo in the screen.
Step 2: Release Shift until you see the log-in screen in the progress bar.
Then you can empty your Trash directly.
For exiting Safe Mode, you just need to restart your Mac normally.
Force empty your Trash on Mac with Terminal app (code error)
When you receive the failure message of emptying Trash, and cannot fix it with the above methods, you should try Terminal app.
Terminal allows you to modify your Mac in ways you can't reverse, so you just think twice before doing it. Otherwise, you just follow the second method in part 2 to take the third-party app to help you fix the problem.
Step 1: Go to Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities to open Terminal.
Step 2: Type 'sudo rm –R', leave a space after R, and do not hit Enter.
Step 3: Open Trash app, and select the files and folders that you want to empty, drop and drop them into 'Terminal' and the path of each file and folder will display in the Terminal window.
Step 4: Hit 'Enter' and Mac will start emptying the files and folders in Trash.
The process will take minutes, and you just need to wait patiently.
Empty Trash by repairing Mac disk (unknown reasons)
If you still cannot delete Trash data, then you can repair your Mac and empty Trash.
This way is recommended by Apple.
Step 1: Enter Recovery mode on Mac by holding down Command-R while Mac opens or restart.
Step 2: In the 'macOS Utilities' window appears, select 'Disk Utility' and click 'Continue'.
Step 3: Select the disk that contains the file that you want to delete. Then use 'First Aid' feature of 'Disk Utility' to repair that disk.
Step 4: Exit Disk Utility, then restart your Mac to empty the Trash.
Still, there are other reasons for failing to empty Trash like insufficient privileges, System Integrity Protection, etc. you need to turn to Apple's official site for help.
Part 4. FAQs of Emptying Trash on Mac
1. How to always secure Empty Trash on Mac?
First, you need to enter the Finder Preferences options, accessible by either going to the Finder menu and selecting Preferences', or by hitting Command+ within anywhere in the Mac Finder. Then, navigate to Advanced and click the checkbox next to Empty Trash Securely' to enable secure file deletion through the Trash, and then close out of the Finder Preferences.
Can't Empty Trash Mac
2. What should I do when I can’t delete files or Empty Trash on Mac?
If you can't delete the files or empty trash on Mac, you could start up from macOS Recovery by holding down Command-R while your Mac starts up. When the macOS Utilities window appears, select Disk Utility and click Continue. In Disk Utility, select the disk that contains the file that you want to delete. Then use the First Aid feature of Disk Utility to repair that disk. Then, quit Disk Utility, and restart your Mac and empty the Trash.
3. Where is trash on Mac terminal?
Trash is located on the Dock of your macOS Desktop. No matter whether your Mac is running on macOS Mojave or an OS X, you will always find the Trash at that exact location.
4. How to Force Empty Trash in Mac OS X?
First, press and hold the mouse button on the Trash icon in the Dock. The context menu for Trash will display. Then, you need to press and hold the Option key. Here select Empty Trash from the context menu for Trash. In the end, release the Option key.
Better Trash For Mac
Conclusion
Here we come to the ending of this page.
This page focuses on 6 solutions to help you to empty your Trash on Mac. You can follow the step-by-step guide to make settings and empty Trash directly. Still, you able to use third-party app to get Trash emptied permanently and safely and free up space.
If you have any advice, just leave your comments below.