Deleted Files not going to Trash, Catalina

catalinatrash

I have recently updated my Macbook to Catalina and since then everytime I delete a file using "Move to Bin" option or by dragging it to the Trash can I get a message "This item will be deleted immediately. You can’t undo this action.".

Any help is appreciated.

Best Answer

Sometimes the invisible user trash folder in your home folder gets the wrong permissions set (for unclear reason).

Usually the trash can looks like this viewed in Terminal/ls -la

drwx------   3 user  staff     96 23 Nov 19:13 .Trash

I had several similar incidents and the folder looks like this then:

d---------   3 -     -         96 23 Nov 19:13 .Trash

To get back the normal behaviour open the Terminal in /Applications/Utilities and enter:

ls -la ~/

to get a list of the content of your user folder (the .Trash should be listed as well). Execute the typed command by hitting the return key. Check the content of the folder whether it really is your folder.

To remove the broken trash folder enter:

sudo rm -d ~/.Trash

You have to have an account with admin prvileges to execute a sudo command.

Exit the shell by entering exit and quit Terminal.

In the Finder simply create a new folder and move it to the trash. This will create a new .Trash folder with proper privs and move the new folder made previously to the trash can.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Sort trash files by date trashed

Update for OSX 10.9 Mavericks:

It appears that you can now sort by Date Added in OSX Mavericks. In Trash right click one of the columns and click to check the Date Added column. The click on the column header until the list of files is sorted by Date Added descending.

For OS X 10.7 Lion:

Go to the AppleScript Editor, paste in the following script and save it in /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
    repeat with this_item in added_items
        do shell script "find " & quoted form of POSIX path of this_item & " -exec touch {} \\;"
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Then…

Right-click on any folder in Finder, go to Services and click Folder Actions Setup.
Cancel the dialog asking which script to attach.
Click the checkbox to Enable Folder Actions
Click the plus sign to choose the Trash.

Press ⌘ cmd + ⇧ shift + G and type in ~/.Trash, click Go or press ↩ return, and then click Open.
On the right side, click the plus sign to choose the AppleScript that you saved earlier.

Thanks to Graham for the link which pointed me in the right direction.

MacOS – Can’t delete .plist files from Trash

When you have problems to empty the trash, rm -rf ~/.Trash/* in the terminal does the job for you.

Edit :

You have to keep in mind that there might be multiple .Trash directories.
For example on a USB stick or a external Drive, OSX will create another .Trash at the root of the drive. So you might need to use rm -rf /Volumes/DriveName/.Trash.*

Best Answer

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MacOS – Sort trash files by date trashed

MacOS – Can’t delete .plist files from Trash

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