If youre looking for a truly secure way to get rid of files from your computer.

Questions? Comments? Post them below or email us!īe sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums. Mac: While Macs have a built-in secure file deletion system, for some people that might not be enough. Make sure this option is unchecked to prevent lengthy trash emptying times If your trash is taking a while to delete, and especially if it takes longer for larger files, then go to the 'Advanced' section of the Finder preferences and uncheck the option to 'Empty Trash securely' if it is enabled. Additionally, the option may have been turned on and then forgotten about, or been turned on by another user. As we have discussed above, when you empty the Trash on Mac, some files and folders are not completely erased but still occupying some space on Mac. Albeit a rare occurrence, system updates and upgrades have resulted in the secure empty trash option being enabled for some users. This will enable the context menu for the trash to be populated. Press and hold the mouse button on the Trash icon. The primary one is with the 'Secure Empty Trash' option, where if enabled it will take a lot longer to delete items since it performs a multiple pass write to the area of the disk where the files resided. One easy way out is to use the ‘Option Key’ to enable you to empty trash Mac.

While various problems such as those we've previously covered can happen to the OS X trash, there are some built-in behaviors that may appear as a problem if they are activated when people do not know it. We've covered a number of problems that people have had with the trash in OS X, and a few months ago I wrote a tutorial on how to remove and reset the trash in OS X, which can be used to clear a few common trash misbehaviors.

Enable secure empty trash mac