When the Trash will not empty, and what each error means

The Trash refuses to empty for three quite different reasons, and the fix depends entirely on which one you have. The error text tells you, if you read it rather than reaching for the force.

"The operation cannot be completed because the item is in use"

Something still has the file open. This is the most common one and it is not a permissions problem.

1. Quit the application the file belonged to. For a document, that is usually enough.
2. If you do not know which, restart. This resolves it in almost every case and takes less time than hunting.
3. If it persists after a restart, the holder is a background process. Find it with the command below.

lsof ~/.Trash/name-of-the-file

That prints the process holding it, with its name. Quit that, and the Trash empties normally.

"You do not have permission"

The file was created by another user or by an installer running as root. Hold Option while choosing Empty Trash, which skips the checks that are stopping it.

If that still refuses, the file is on an external drive with ownership enabled. Select the drive, Get Info, and tick *Ignore ownership on this volume*.

It empties, and the space does not come back

This is not a Trash problem at all. The files are gone, and the space is being held elsewhere, almost always by local snapshots that still contain them.

That has its own guide, because it confuses everyone: purgeable space, and why deleting frees nothing.

The Trash you have forgotten about

There is more than one. Every volume has its own, and so do several applications:

• Each external drive has a hidden .Trashes folder, emptied only when that drive is connected.
• Photos keeps Recently Deleted for 30 days, inside the library. See what the Photos library holds.
• Mail keeps a Trash mailbox per account, often set to never delete.

A Mac that has been tidied often still holds gigabytes in these, because emptying the Finder Trash does not touch any of them.