This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How To: Show Warning Before Emptying The Trash
One of the options available to users in Mac OS X Lion is the ability to prevent the empty trash warning.
The trash warning is turned on by default and is your final line of defence before you erase the data permanently. Whilst there are application utilities which can bring back deleted data they are not always successful and should never be relied on.
When you proceed to empty the trash via a right click on the trash bin icon or Shift + Command + Delete on your keyboard when in the Finder you will be presented with the following window:
If you would like to prevent this window from showing when emptying the trash simply proceed to the Finder. Then navigate to Finder > Preferences from the menu bar at the top of your display and the following window will be presented:
You will notice that you need to be in the “Advanced” tab and highlighted in red in the above image is the setting that you will need to deselect in order to prevent the warning window from showing.
Whilst this does give full control to the end user I would advise most users to leave this default option turned on to simply prevent any accidental deletions.
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