Files stuck in Rubbish Bin

Question

Files stuck in Rubbish Bin

Hello everyone.

Some time ago, I emptied some caches (at least I think that is what I did) by shifting files to the bin. When trying to empty the bin, the computer won’t allow me to delete them. They have been there a couple of years, and in fact have been transferred over when I bought a new MacBook

They are:

com.apple.progressd

com.apple.quicklook.ThumbnailsAgent

com.apple.routined

com.apple.Safari

com.apple.ScreenTimeAgent

They take up zero bytes, but it seems like I should get rid of them. Any solutions would be great!

MacBook Air, macOS 15.6

Posted on Oct 22, 2025 3:49 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dialabrain

Level 10

135,899 points

Oct 22, 2025 3:58 AM in response to Mark Hilderbrandt

Some things to try…

Method 1. Force empty Mac Trash by pressing down the Option key and simultaneously clicking the Empty button in the Trash folder.
Method 2. Use the Terminal command. Open Terminal from Finder > Applications > Utilities, type the commandsudo rm -R, and press Space, then drag and drop the items from Mac Trash to the Terminal window, and press Enter to run the command.
Method 3. Boot Mac into Safe Mode. Click this link to boot an Intel Mac or an Apple silicon Mac into Safe Mode, the specific steps vary. After getting into Safe Mode, try to delete those items from Mac Trash again.
Method 4. Repair Mac hard drive with First Aid. Perhaps, the Mac hard drive is corrupted, then it prevents from deleting items on Mac. You can run First Aid to check and repair some logical errors on the drive, then try to delete those files from Mac Trash again.
Method 5. Uninstall recently installed apps. Some apps may interfere with the normal performance of your Mac. The newly installed apps should be suspicious.
Method 6. Update macOS to eliminate system-related errors.

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