I’m trying to find out how to delete individual files from the Trash, instead of just all of them at once. I recall that Windows XP allowed this, and I always found it convenient.
Well, you really shouldn’t use your Trash as storage, so we’re first going to encourage you not to put anything in there that you aren’t intending to delete at some point. Mac OS X doesn’t natively allow you to delete Trash files one at a time. In fact, if you open the Trash and try to delete individual files from there, they’re actually “removed” from the Trash…and put back where you had them before. (This is also accomplished by right-clicking a file in the Trash and choosing Put Back.)
Deleting MP3s one at a time. With the Terminal. Now that’s nerdy.
But since you found it convenient in XP, there’s a way you can do this. Open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities) and type rm and a space. Then drag the file you want to delete from the Trash to the Terminal window. That adds its file path to the command. Press Return to execute it, and the file will be deleted instantly. Use this at your own risk!
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llee
April 12, 2011 at 7:26am
I tried this and it seemed to work. Maybe you'd like to try it, too.
In Snow Leopard, launch Automator and choose Service when prompted for the type of workflow to be created. From the pop-up menus at the top, For “Service receives selected”, choose “with files and folders” as input and set the scope (the pop-up menu just to the right of “in”) to “Finder.app”. Then add a “Run Shell Script” action from the list in the action column, and choose “as arguments” under “Pass input”. Paste the script below into the Run Shell Script text field, replacing anything that’s already there, then save the Service with a name such as "Delete one or more immediately". Next time you want to delete something already in the trash, open the trash folder, right (contextual)-click the item (or select several and right-click one) in the trash window and choose "Delete one or more immediately" from the Services contextual menu.
Here's the shell script snippet needed:
for f in "$@"
do
rm -r "$f"
done
Rainman522
April 11, 2011 at 5:06pm
I use OneTrash that I downloaded for free from the Mac App Store. It adds another trash like looking icon to your Dock. From there, it gives you a list of all the files in your Trash that you can choose to delete. Unfortunately, you can only delete one file at a time from what I can tell. But it's a pretty useful tool in my opinion, especially since I just transitioned over from Windows to Mac OS X back in August. I still like the ability to pick and choose what I want to delete in the trash. Unfortunately for me, old habits are hard to change.
rosstaman
April 11, 2011 at 3:23pm
Like ifallen, I don't put anything in the trash that I still want, but I do like that option to recover later if something ends up in there by mistake. These days, most of the items in my trash are not there by my own doing, if you know what I mean - various utilities at work.
The main need I have is that I'll have a Flash or SD card that I want to empty. I should be able to delete the stuff on that without having to empty the trash for every other disk at the same time. I know about "rm" and might use that, but it seems Apple should recognize the need. I now have 6+ different devices at a given moment attached to my computer. The whole trash metaphor starts to become useless when you have to empty it all the time.
And, while upgrading trash, why not add the options like Mail has: delete things from the trash after they have been there a certain amount of time - like 2 weeks?
ifallen
April 11, 2011 at 12:59pm
I find this useful because I like to put things I *think* i don't need in the trash, but I like to wait around a week to delete them just in case, unless they are really large. For example, I had to drag everything out of the trash the other day accept for a game demo that was eating up a few gigs, just so I could delete the demo.
