You’ll see 'Sharing & Permissions', select the arrow to drop down the options, click your current user name to check the file permissions, and then adjust permissions option to 'Read & Write'.Right click on a file in your Trash bin and select Get Info.In this case, you need to check each file to make sure all the files are accessible and writable, otherwise, you need to change the file’s permissions for removal. When emptying Trash on Mac, some files may be read only or not allowed to access to and thus stop the trash empty process. #3 Fix Mac Trash Won’t Empty File without Permissions Then click Empty to empty trash on Mac.Right click on the file and choose Get Info.In Trash bin, find the locked file with a lock icon.If files are locked, you should unlock them before deleting. When you try to remove a file, but unfortunately you failed and it said 'The operation could not be completed because the item '(item name)' is locked'. #2 Fix Mac Trash Won’t Empty File Under Lock

You can also quit all the running apps to make sure that the file is no more being used by any of the apps. You should try to close the app that is using the file. If you can’t remove files from Trash bin and you get an error about “File in Use”, then your file is used by another app or involved in a background process. How to Fix Mac Trash Won't Empty File in Use, Lock, Disk Full, etc. Then Empty Trash again to check if the problem is fixed.Click on Apple menu and select Restart.Mac Trash won’t empty error may be cleared by restarting the Mac.

Your Mac will become clean and fast, as good as new. When restarting Mac, this process will empty active RAM and start everything from scratch to clear faults.

Confirm to Empty Trash and check if your Trash can be emptied on Mac.

Then right click on the Trash bin icon and select Empty Trash.

We just quit the app and get it back to default settings for a new task. Trash may stop working and freeze for a variety of internal and external factors, but quit Trash and redo Empty Trash can be an easy solution for this issue sometimes.

Recover files to local drive or cloud platformįree Download General Solutions for Mac Trash Won't Emptyįor a known or unknown reason causing Mac Trash won’t empty, there are 2 general solutions to fix this problem, redo Empty Trash or restart mac.

Use both quick scanning and deep scanning mode to recover files for different data loss situations.Retrieve files lost due to formatting, deletion, system update, etc.Restore 200+ types of file: video, audio, image, documents, etc.Recover files from various internal/external hard drive on mac.

Apple mac trash folder