Trash functionality is usually integrated into a
desktop environment and its
file manager. Examples include: •
Classic Mac OS and
macOS, with
Finder, as "Trash" (localised as "Wastebasket", later "Bin") •
MS-DOS 6.x, with
Microsoft Undelete, as "Delete Sentry" •
Microsoft Windows, with
Windows Explorer (later called
File Explorer starting with Windows 8), as "Recycle Bin" •
GNOME and
MATE (
Linux), with
Nautilus and Caja, respectively •
KDE (
Linux), with
Konqueror and
Dolphin •
Xfce (
Linux), with
Thunar •
Amiga, with
Workbench. The
Professional File System added trashcan-esque behavior at the filesystem level. •
Linux Mint with its default file manager,
Nemo. •
Android OS since version 11, with a 30-day "grace period" until trashed files are removed from the file system. and Xfce implementations comply with the
freedesktop.org Trash specification, ensuring that any applications written with this specification in mind will be interoperable with any trash can implementation. Although the various Linux desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, and Xfce provide a trash mechanism, there is traditionally no simple way to trash something from the
command line interface. Some third-party applications, such as
trash-cli, provide commands on the command-line to use the trash, compatible with the FreeDesktop.org Trash Specification.
macOS Using
macOS, a file or
folder is deleted in
Finder by dragging its icon onto the Trash icon at the right hand end of the
Dock, moving the item into the Trash folder, where it can be viewed but not used until it is moved out again. To restore highlighted items from the Trash to their original position, a contextual menu brings up a Put Back option. The keyboard shortcut to move highlighted items to Trash, or Put Back items, is . To finally delete files, clicking on "Empty" brings up a warning that this cannot be undone, and an option to delete. Putting items in the Trash folder moves them to a hidden temporary folder: for the boot disk, a user account has this at ; each mounted volume such as an external drive has a hidden folder in the root folder named . When viewing the device's available space the space occupied by the deleted files is shown as occupied. The Trash folder shows deleted files from external drives, including removable media. This does not apply to networked drives, where trying to move an item to Trash brings up a warning that it will be deleted immediately and this cannot be undone. Since
OS X El Capitan, the Trash can be bypassed by pressing when a file is selected. Since
macOS Sierra, the user can enable an option to have the Trash automatically empty after 30 days. In UK and Australian English localisations, the Trash is known as "Bin". Files may still be recoverable if a
computer backup was run before they were moved to "Recently Deleted".
Microsoft Windows .
Microsoft's
Recycle Bin is implemented as a
special folder with columns like
Date deleted and
Original location. Typically only files deleted via
File Explorer (but not necessarily other Windows graphical interfaces such as file selection dialogs) will be put into the Recycle Bin; files deleted via the
Command Prompt are permanently deleted, as (by default) are files deleted via operating system
APIs and applications other than Windows Explorer. Some operating system APIs do, however, allow applications to recycle files rather than delete them. In previous Windows operating systems and in MS-DOS,
undeletion was the only way to recover accidentally or intentionally deleted files. As standard, the Recycle Bin only stores files deleted from hard drives, not from removable media, such as memory cards, thumb drives, or floppy disks, nor does it store files deleted from network drives. There are methods to make it work on network paths, however. The Recycle Bin has a setting to configure the amount of deleted files it can store. Free disk space allocated for this is not actually used until files are deleted from folders and stored in the Recycle Bin. In versions of Windows prior to
Windows Vista, the default configuration of the Recycle Bin is a global setting for all drives to hold 10% of the total capacity of each host hard drive volume to store deleted files. For example, on a volume with a capacity of 20 gigabytes, the Recycle Bin will hold up to 2 gigabytes of deleted files. This can be changed anywhere from 0 to 100% of the drive space, but will not be allowed to exceed 3.99GB of space, even if the user-indicated % of the drive space is larger than 3.99GB. If the Recycle Bin fills up to maximum capacity, the oldest files will be deleted in order to accommodate the newly deleted files. The Recycle Bin can be accessed as an
shortcut from the desktop, by searching "Recycle Bin" in Windows Explorer, or by typing "shell:RecycleBinFolder" in the
Run dialog box (). It is the only icon shown by default on the Windows XP desktop. When accessed from the desktop, the Recycle Bin options and information are different from those of the physical Recycle Bin folders seen on each partition in
Windows Explorer. From
Windows XP onwards, with
NTFS, different users cannot see the contents of each other's Recycle Bins. Prior to Windows Vista, a file in the Recycle Bin is stored in its physical location and renamed as . == Other uses ==