Comments on: 4 Useful Trash Keyboard Shortcuts Every Mac User Should Know

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:34:52 +0000

I’ve recently noticed that I dont get the sound effect when I use cmd + del to send an item to the trash. Not sure when I lost it? Lion update? One of those things im in danger of wasting a load of time on – any ideas? (I have checked sound in prefferences and all seems ok there) Thanks in advance.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:40:06 +0000

Hi Hayo, thanks for the guidance on deleting individual file in the trash can. One more question is whether you can delete a group of files at a time, rather than one file at a time. thanks. Matthew

By: Stan

Stan — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:47:07 +0000

You mean cmd+backspace, shift+option+cmd+backspace etc right?

By: Matthew Chu

Matthew Chu — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 09:50:33 +0000

Thanks so much, I will give it a try. This will be extremely useful.

By: Hayo Baan

Hayo Baan — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 09:26:42 +0000

Interesting, the post got garbled and left out “full path to file” after the rm command. Guess because I used angle brackets…

By: Hayo Baan

Hayo Baan — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 09:10:10 +0000

Yes, you can and it’s something I do frequently. Simply use Terminal, type “rm ” followed by return.

Instead of typing the full path to the file, simply drag the file from the trash onto the terminal window and the full path will be entered for you.

If you’re trying to remove a folder (or e.g., an application) this way, add -r to the rm command. If you don’t have enough rights to remove a file, you may need to use sudo rm instead.

Hope this helps,
Hayo

By: Matthew Chu

Matthew Chu — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 02:39:43 +0000

Is there anyway to delete from inside the Trash an individual file like in a Windows system. I use Parallels to run Windows 7 as a virtual machine and I can delete files individually in the Recycle Bin in Windows which contains the same files as in the Mac. Can it be done on the Mac without having to go into Windows. Thanks for any help on this.

By: Bosse Nilsson

Bosse Nilsson — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:04:48 +0000

Big WARNING here.
I´ve had users erased wrong folders using theses commands. OSX can in certain circumstances be “vague” when it comes to the selected folder. The user may have marked a folder in a window that´s not active. When thinking they should delete the folder in the window out of focus, they delete the “unintintially” marked folder in the frontmost window.
Yes, it was a user that was VERY used to computers… so…