Add Trash To The Sidebar 10
Tip
Hey
Today’s handy hint was supplied by my friend and I just had to share it with you. As you may know the Trash folder exists in your dock. This is quite a useful place. You can actually place a link to your Trash folder in the sidebar, which I find is a handy place to work from. This tip is a bit long winded, ands its not a simple solution. However the results are quite useful.
Simply dragging the Trash icon onto the dock will not work. For some reason Apple have stopped you from being able to do this. The first step is to go to the Trash folder. You do this in Finder, from View > Go To Folder menu option. In the text box type ~/.Trash. This will take you to your Trash folder. Select Column view in Finder.
At this point, you can’t drag the Trash folder to the sidebar as mentioned previously. However with the folder selected you can use a nifty menu option. Under File, select “Add To Sidebar”. This will pop the Trash folder in your sidebar. It doesn’t have the Trash menu icon, but we can fix that in the next step.
Open up the Trash folder and Get Info. You can do this by right clicking on the Trash folder and selecting the option, or pressing Command + I. The next step is to Get Info for the sidebar Trash folder (still following me?). Right click on the .Trash sidebar option and select Get Info again. At this point you should have two Get Info windows open. One for the normal Trash folder, and one for the sidebar.
Select the original Trash icon (top left hand corner) in Get Info and copy this to your clipboard by pressing Command + C. Then, with a bit of luck, paste this onto the icon for the sidebar. The icon should change to a Trash icon. If you don’t fully understand how I did this, then please leave a comment.
At this point you have finished. Do Not, what ever you do rename the Trash folder from .Trash to Trash. This will cause a whole load of problems, and you wont be able to empty your trash. Not helpful.
I hope you have followed this tip correctly. It makes sense in my head, but then again I know what I am doing. If you run into problems please leave a comment below.
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Where To Next?
10 Responses to “Add Trash To The Sidebar”
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1
I did all that, including getting the trash icon in the side bar. Very nice.
But when I ‘empty trash’ the icon gets removed too! Not surprising as it is in a file called Icon which lives in the .Trash folder. I tried changing permissions on the icon file, but ‘empty trash’ ignores those permissions.
Any ideas? Still useful to have trash in the sidebar with the standard folder icon.Comment By John Gilbert on June 24th, at 11:31 pm
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2
hey
yeh like an idiot i renamed it to Trash without reading your whole guide, and now it wont empty!!
can you help me out?
thanks
nickComment By Nick Healy on June 25th, at 1:42 am
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Hey Nick,
I would say Open terminal and simply type :
mv ~/Trash ~/.Trash
But I’m no expert so you maybe ought to wait for confirmation from James.
Comment By Pierre Cléaud on June 25th, at 9:18 am
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@Pierre, your right that does work, thats how I got it back.
@Nick, I would re recommend you read the whole guide next time, it usually helps. I did put that bit in bold, since it is a very important part.
Comment By admin on June 25th, at 10:44 am
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Quote:
“I did put that bit in bold, since it is a very important part”Yes but did you double the size of the font, colour it red , underline it and have it flash on and off?….. NO!….. Tut tut ;)
Thanks for this and for all the other tips and techniques you’ve shown us.
Comment By Paul Russam on June 25th, at 2:53 pm
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What about John’s (first) question… is there a solution for that as well?
Another question (which might sound silly, but nonetheless): Could you rename the trash folder in sidebar in any other name, but preserving the ‘period’ in front of it or would that cause the same problems as renaming the whole thing?
Cheers, S.
Comment By silvestre on June 25th, at 2:55 pm
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In response to John question, I haven’t found a solution. I’ll keep looking but I don’t think there is a way around it. I don’t empty my Trash that often so personally it isn’t much trouble adding the icon again.
Comment By admin on June 25th, at 3:52 pm
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If you do happen to change the name of your new Trash folder and you can’t empty either trash, open a new Terminal (spotlight “terminal”) and enter in: “sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash” minus the quotations and press ‘enter’.
It’ll show up a warning and then say ‘password’. Enter in your account password (it won’t show up so just type it) and then press ‘enter’. Then log out of your account (no need to restart your entire comp) and log back it. Your new Trash can should be there and empty!
This program deletes your old Trash can (and all contents in it) and creates a new one for you. It is full proof (I’ve used it) and very helpful!
-Claire
Comment By Claire on February 5th, at 10:20 pm
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I found this tip while looking for a way to maintain the Trash icon on the .Trash sidebar shortcut. Every time I fill then empty the Trash the icon reverts back to a folder.
You can create an Alias to Trash called “Trash” instead of “.Trash” in terminal by typing: ln -s /.Trash Trash
Unfortunately, Aliases can’t be dragged to the sidebar.Comment By Justin Freid on February 17th, at 11:13 pm
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10
very good guide – now it just needs to be able to empty trash and it’s perfect.
Why the hell did Apple cripple the finder with out being able to have a trash icon on it?
Comment By blackbox on June 12th, at 12:55 am