Filed under: Productivity, Tips and tricks, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: The best way to add the Trash to your Finder sidebar
Update: Alas, it looks like I'm going to have to withdraw this one. Do not use this tip, particularly on PPC Macs. Although it worked fine in my initial testing on an Intel Mac, it's becoming clear that this doesn't work for everyone, nor does it persist after a restart. So while I don't think it's dangerous (if you tried this and it didn't work properly, just force-restart the Finder to return things to normal), it is not actually a good solution. See our earlier Ask TUAW post for other, more permanent ways of doing this.On an older Ask TUAW we were asked how to add the Trash to the Finder sidebar. I pointed to several different solutions to this, but just recently reader DG left a comment on that post with far and away the most elegant solution. Basically, show the Trash folder in the Finder by clicking on the Trash can in the Dock. Next hit ?-i to reveal the "Trash Info" window (right). Click on the triangle to reveal the Preview if it's not already visible and then drag the preview icon onto the Finder sidebar and drop it.
This will place the Trash in the sidebar with the proper icon and you can now drag and drop files to the Trash from the Finder. Not only that, the icon will even animate to show whether the trash is empty or not (though it may take a few moments to refresh your Finder window so you can see it).
Thanks, DG!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jason said 8:31PM on 5-03-2007
Umm.. nice tip, but now how do I remove it? I just tried it on my wife's machine and it won't go away now.
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marc cardwell said 8:38PM on 5-03-2007
ummm. this crashed my finder (10.4.9) when i dragged the icon to a spot below my other items in the side bar. then i dragged it to a spot between folders, and it left a blank spot. whn i click on the blank spot, i get an error that says "the volume "" cannot be found."
any ideas here?
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tenchim86 said 8:40PM on 5-03-2007
Click and drag the sidebar icon into the trash in your dock.
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Justin Miller said 10:07PM on 5-03-2007
To remove it, just force-restart Finder. Hold down Control-Option and click Finder in the dock and pick Relaunch.
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Alan said 8:46PM on 5-03-2007
I can't get rid of it either. Help!
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DG said 8:51PM on 5-03-2007
Ah. It does seem tricky to remove. My apologies.
Please hold off on trying this one until removing it can be figured out.
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Tim Kimberl said 8:55PM on 5-03-2007
Just restart finder and it'll be gone (after you attempt to drag it off of the sidebar). Pretty neat tip, don't know why apple doesn't impliment this in an easier way.
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AR said 8:56PM on 5-03-2007
I actually had the opposite problem - it won't stay in the sidebar, it just disappears from time to time.
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Ryan said 8:59PM on 5-03-2007
You simply, right (control) click on the new Trash icon in the sidebar and select "Remove From Sidebar." This is a great idea for people who prefer to drag stuff to the trash. Personally I've been using the command-delete(key) keystroke to delete things in the finder for years, it's better that way.
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DG said 8:59PM on 5-03-2007
OK. It's actually not a permanent change by the looks of things because it vanishes if you force quit the finder. So much for that elegant solution :/
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Macskeeball said 9:15PM on 5-03-2007
It appears that I have the exact same problems as Marc Cardwell above. I use 10.4.9 on PowerPC (PowerBook G4, more specifically).
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marc cardwell said 9:56PM on 5-03-2007
force quit worked on my powerbook g4.
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Ray Sharpe said 9:52PM on 5-03-2007
Ever better is to right click on the top of the finder window and select Cusomise Toolbar and drag the delete icon up to the top of the finder window.
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laurahelde said 9:44PM on 5-03-2007
Another vote for the marc cardwell/Macskeeball problem (exact same machine, same OS, same problem).
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Macskeeball said 10:09PM on 5-03-2007
Yes, Force Quit worked for me too (before I posted), but I still couldn't get the Trash to show up. The empty space vanished after force quitting, which made since given other people's comments. I'm going to try the admin account to see if it makes a difference.
Is there anyone here using 10.4.9 on PowerPC that had success with these instructions?
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Macskeeball said 10:13PM on 5-03-2007
Trying it with the admin account had the same result. I'm guessing that it's an Intel vs. PowerPC issue or an issue with a recent update that not everyone has.
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Josh said 10:34PM on 5-03-2007
Crashes Finder. No good but nice try for sure! You should be able to Command-Click on the Trash icon when its window is open but that don't work. Shall we all send feedback to Apple now requesting this as a feature and notifying them of this crashing bug? Go to it people, send some Feedback: http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
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Macskeeball said 10:53PM on 5-03-2007
Josh, are you using PowerPC or Intel? What OS version?
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Seth Amott said 11:43PM on 5-03-2007
I umm, err, third the marc cardwell/Macskeeball/laurahelde problem. PowerPC, Mac OS 10.4.9, PowerBook G4, Ect.
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Jeffrey Bergier said 1:20AM on 5-04-2007
my finder crashes when i do it that way.
but if i do cmd+shift+g and type in ~/.trash and then drag the icon from the title bar into the sidebar it works. then it only has the folder icon. But if you do a cmd+i on the .trash folder and cmd+i after clicking on the trash icon you can copy the icon from the trash folder to the generic icon and it works.
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