You can also click the Finder icon in the Dock. Empty all of the Trash: Click the Empty button in the upper-right corner of the Finder window.

Empty Trash by repairing Mac disk (unknown reasons) If you still cannot delete Trash data, then you can repair your Mac and empty Trash.

The process will take minutes, and you just need to wait patiently. In the warning message that appears, click Delete. Step 4: Hit 'Enter' and Mac will start emptying the files and folders in Trash. Empty one item from the Trash: Control-click the item you want to delete, then choose Delete Immediately. Sorry, climbing down from my soapbox now. On your Mac, click the Trash icon in the Dock. It's actually quicker than doing the cd to your Trash folder in the terminal. All you have to do is open a terminal window and type rm followed by a space, open your trash and drag the file you want to remove to the terminal window, then hit return. (You can also press Command-Option-Shift-Delete to bypass it.) IDG. In the case of this example, it's like using a chainsaw to remove a wart. Holding down Option when selecting Finder > Empty Trash bypasses the warning. I would never recommend the use of this command to anyone because I can never be sure that they are as careful as I am.

The only time I ever do this is after I double and triple check that I'm in the right directory and I list the files that I'm about to nuke as an alternate check that the destruction I am about to wreak is the destruction I intend. I'm reasonably savvy with unix, yet I almost never use rm * to delete files. I've been using unix since the late 70's. Slightly off topic, but I feel compelled to point out what I think is bad advice in general.

Mac trash folder cannot be emptied