Mac troubleshooting: What to do when the Trash won’t empty
When you drag files or folders to the Trash icon in the Dock, OS X doesn’t delete them immediately. Just as you can pull something out of a physical trash can before the garbage collector arrives, you can remove files from the Trash until you decide you want to get rid of them for good (and thereby recover the disk space the files were using). When that time comes, you choose Finder > Empty Trash.
Ordinarily, emptying the Trash is immediate and uncomplicated. But occasionally something goes wrong and your Trash won’t empty; the Finder may display an error message indicating a reason (though not how to fix the problem). If that happens to you, here are several solutions you can try.
‘The file is in use’
One common problem is that the file 'is in use'.
If the error message claims that a file is in use, quit the last app that accessed that file (if you know what it is). Then, try to empty the Trash again. Sometimes this error is spurious—for example, Mail may report that a file is in use long after you sent it as an attachment. Even though the file isn’t truly in use, Mail might treat it as if it were. Quitting Mail, emptying the Trash, and reopening Mail usually solves the problem.
‘The file is locked’
If the error message tells you that a file is locked, hold down Option and again choose Finder > Empty Trash; the Option key tells OS X to override locked files.
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