The path of each file and folder will appear on the Terminal window. Open Trash, select all the files and folders from Trash. DO NOT leave out the space and DO NOT hit Enter in this step. Open Terminal and type: sudo rm –R followed by a space. And in macOS High Sierra, we need to use the command: sudo rm –R .
In Mac OS X, we used to use sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/ command to force empty Trash. However, you should be careful! Otherwise, it will erase all your data. Using Terminal to perform command is very effective to force empty Trash.
How to Force Empty Trash on Mac with Terminal on macOS Then reboot your Mac to make the command take effect.
The steps are sort of same as the above, but this time the command line is changed into: csrutil enable. After clearing, you’re recommend to enable SIP again to protect your Mac.
System Integrity Protection(SIP), also called rootless feature, was applied to Mac since Mac 10.11 to prevent malicious software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac. When You Cannot Empty Trash Because of System Integrity Protection Then click First Aid to repair the disk.ģ.
If all methods above don’t work, you may need a helper – Cleaner One to clear the Trash in one click.Ĭleaner One help you free up more space by performing an overall cleanup on your Mac, cleaning caches, logs, mail/photos junks, unneeded iTunes backups, apps, large files etc.
Therefore, you need to start up the Mac in safe mode, which won’t load any third-party hardware drivers or startup programs. The Mac will remind you that some file is in use when it is used by a startup item or login item. This step is to make sure you have quit all apps even some apps with background processes still using the file. This is a common scenario when Mac users clearing Trash, thus, it is necessary to give you some solutions. You might receive messages multiple times which said “This operation can’t be completed because the item ‘insert file name here’ is in use.” In this post, we’d like to talk about why you receive messages as mentioned above and how to release the files on your Mac so you can delete it safely.