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Can Only Delete Files Immediately But Not Store in Trash

When I drag items to the Trash on my Mac Studio 2022 using Monterey 12.3.1, it doesn't move the items to the Trash but asks me if I want to delete them immediately. I've never encountered this kind of thing before. Wonder if I accidentally hit a setting somewhere, but can't find any reasonable explanations.

Best Answered by

Connie Yang

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

By default, the items are moved to the Trash on your Mac Dock rather than being deleted immediately. It is abnormal that your Trash asks you to delete the items immediately, indicating that your Trash has some errors.

You can restart your Mac to see if the temporary system problems lead to the Trash that can't open on your Mac but delete files immediately.

If the issue still can't be fixed, you can re-create the Dock .plist file. That is to exclude if the Dock errors cause the abnormality of the Trash.

  1. Open Finder and click Go > Go to Folder on the top Finder menu bar.
  2. Enter ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist into the search box and hit Enter.
  3. Select the Dock .plist file and press Command + Shift + Delete to permanently delete it from your Mac.
  4. Restart your Mac to let the Dock .plist file automatically re-create.

You can also run Terminal to open the Trash on your Mac:

  1. Open Terminal.
  2. Enter open ~/.Trash.

Then, drag the file you want to delete to the Trash.