How to clean the Recycle Bin on macOS device using Maintenance – Addigy

When users delete files, they may continue to take space until removed from the Recycle Bin. This article will walk through how to create a maintenance item that will remove all items in the bin that are older than a certain amount of days.

Script

First, you will need to build out the script the maintenance item will run. Only modify the days variable on line 3 to set how old the files you'd like deleted to be:

Screen_Shot_2022-07-12_at_2.52.39_PM.png

#!/bin/bash

days="20"
oldIFS="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'
Users=$(dscl . list /Users | grep -v '_')
for User in $Users
do
 Trash="/Users/$User/.Trash"
if [ -e "$Trash" ]; then
 Files=$(ls "$Trash") &> /dev/null
 if [[ $Files == "" ]]; then
    echo "no files"

 fi
 epochToday=$(date +%s)
for f in $Files
do
 fileEpoch=$(date -r "$Trash/$f" +%s)
 epochDifference=$((epochToday - fileEpoch))
 daysSince=$((epochDifference / (60 * 60 * 24)))
if [[ $daysSince -gt $days ]]; then
rm -rf "$Trash/$f"
echo "$Trash/$f"
fi
done
fi
done

Maintenance Item

After building this script out you can setup the Maintenance item to deploy this to your devices. Here is what the final product will look like:
Screen_Shot_2022-07-12_at_2.55.35_PM.png