Simple Ways to Stop Mac From Showing Prompts Before Deleting

Macs have an inbuilt mechanism to display a confirmation message to verify the user before deleting any file from your system.  What you need to know is no deleted files are lost from your Mac until you delete them permanently from the trash folder. Trash folder is the one with the waste paper bucket icon which you can access to delete your files permanently from the computer.

If you are deleting your files to create some space on your Mac, you may keep in mind to also remove those files from the trash folder. When you delete the unwanted files from the trash folder, you are presented with a message requesting your permission that “You confirm that you want to delete” the file that you have selected. It is indeed user-friendly to stop any unwanted data loss or accidental deletion of your project files. This feature becomes much more useful when you don’t have any backup files to secure your data.

Before heading to various steps for getting rid of the confirmation message for deleting your files, let me give you a full disclaimer.  It is a pretty useful feature to have this message generate at the time of deletion to secure your content because once the files are removed from the trash folder it is not reversible or you cannot head back from there. But if you are sure and don’t prefer this feature, you can opt for any of the methods given below to remove this message.

Immediate empty trash

1.        If you are heading for deleting any file or folder, you can use these steps to get rid of agreeing to the confirmation message.

1.       Press the Option/Alt key from your keyboard and while holding it right click on the trash folder.

2.        Now select empty trash from the menu.

By correctly following these steps, you will be able to delete your entire trash folder without any more steps to go through.

Manual procedure to stop confirmation before emptying trash

If you are not fond of remembering short keys to prevent the confirmation message before deleting, you can opt for this manual procedure which will change the settings for you and free you from holding on to any keys. Follow the steps below to apply these settings on your Mac.

1.        Launch the “Finder Window.”

2.        Now select “Preference” from the options.

3.        From the options in preference, you have to select “Advanced,”

4.        And now uncheck “Show warning before emptying the trash” option.

Deleting a single file from trash folder

Are you looking for a way to only delete one file or folder from all the junk files in the trash folder? Well, you can also achieve this by going through these simple steps. But the downside to this is that you will still face the confirmation message, even if you have turned off the warning.

1.        Launch your Trash folder.

2.        Head to the file you desire to delete.

3.        Now “Right-click or Control-click” on the targeted file.

4.        And select “Delete Immediately.”

You can also stop the confirmation message to appear during normal deletion of files and folders. Just choose the file or folder you wish to delete and hit “Option + Command + Delete” keys and select “delete” on the warning dialog. By all of these methods, you can delete files and folders with ease.

Mathew Anderson  is a Microsoft Office expert and has been working in the technical industry since 2002. As a technical expert, Mathew has written technical blogs, manuals, white papers, and reviews for many websites such as office.com/setup.

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