Trash management

To prevent accidental deletion of files, you can use a trash can. To ensure compatibility between multiple applications, you can use software (CLI, GUI or Library) that follows the FreeDesktop.org's Trash specification.

Note Some applications can use a trash can per filesystem. If that’s not the case, deleting files on another filesystem than your $HOME can induce some latency because the files will be transferred between filesystems.

Tools

Most GUI file managers, such as GNOME Files and Dolphin, natively support moving files into the trash and managing its content.

Electron Applications need trash-cli to use the trash.

Command line

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: Add other utilities (Discuss in Talk:Trash management)

glib2 provides a gio trash command, see trash in gio(1) § COMMANDS. The gvfs package is required to fully support trash management, e.g. gio trash --list.
kde-cli-tools provides a kioclient5 command that can be used as kioclient5 move file trash:/ to move file to the trash.
trash-cli — Command line trashcan (recycle bin) interface, used

https://github.com/andreafrancia/trash-cli || trash-cli

trash-d — drop-in replacement for GNU rm, focusing on compatibility and with much better performance, written in D.

https://github.com/rushsteve1/trash-d || trash-d^AUR

trashy — simple, fast, and featureful alternative to rm and trash-cli written in rust

https://github.com/oberblastmeister/trashy || trashy^AUR trashy-bin^AUR trashy-git^AUR

gtrash — A featureful trash CLI manager written in Go

https://github.com/umlx5h/gtrash || gtrash-bin^AUR

python-send2trash — Send file to trash natively

https://github.com/hsoft/send2trash || python-send2trash

trashman — A Python trash manager

https://github.com/Kwpolska/trashman || trashman^AUR

rmtrash — trash-put made compatible to GNUs rm and rmdir

https://github.com/PhrozenByte/rmtrash || rmtrash^AUR

rmw (ReMove to Waste) — A trashcan/recycle bin utility for the command line.

https://theimpossibleastronaut.com/rmw-website/ || rmw^AUR

Automatic cleaning

autotrash — Tool to automatically purge old trashed files

https://github.com/bneijt/autotrash || autotrash^AUR

Dolphin can automatically remove files older than a give number of days, and warn you or remove older or bigger files if the trash can goes above a size threshold. See official documentation.
GNOME can automatically remove older files, see official documentation.
rmw (ReMove to Waste) — A trashcan/recycle bin utility for the command line, that can automatically remove files older than a given number of days, see CONFIGURATION in the manual

https://theimpossibleastronaut.com/rmw-website/ || rmw^AUR

Troubleshooting

Unable to find or create trash directory

External drives

/etc/fstab might not be set correctly. Note that ID must be replaced by your own user id by $ id.

/etc/fstab

# <device>                                <dir>              <type>    <options>         <dump> <fsck>
UUID=75667752-8b06-11ea-bc55-0242ac130003 /externalDrive     ntfs-3g   defaults,uid=ID   0      1

Make sure that the root directory of the drive contains ~/.Trash-1000/{expunged,files,info} and set relevant read permissions for the directory and sub-directory.