How to force empty Trash on your Mac using TerminalHow do you empty the trash on your Mac even when it tells you you can't? There's a Terminal trick for that!
Updated February 2017 with new information about the Terminal command for macOS Sierra.
There are a number of different reasons why your attempt to empty your Mac's trash bin might be thwarted. Maybe an item is "still in use" even though you know it's not. Maybe an item is locked. Maybe an item has a special character that makes your Mac think it's too important to just delete. Whatever the reason, fear not. There is a way you can force your trash bin to empty for good and it can be done using Terminal.
It used to be that you could force the trash to empty on your Mac using sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*, but it doesn't work in El Capitan or Sierra. If you are running OS X 10.10 or higher, follow these steps instead.
Note: There are keyboard shortcuts you can use force your Mac to empty the trash that you should try first. You can Control-click on an item in the trash and select De...
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How to force empty Trash on your Mac using Terminal
