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pizzaguy2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 7, 2024
4
0
Beaverton OR.
I've read dozens of posts about this all over the web but no suggestion seems to help. I recently deleted an app, and for some reason after I then cleared the recycle bin, it left behind what is apparently a zero-length file. Now trying to empty the trash, it refuses saying there is a file in use in there. If you open the trash can, it has nothing in it. I've tried safe mode, tried recovery mode, nothing seems to have any effect. Is there a way to just nuke the trash bin and start over with a new one?
 

pizzaguy2

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 7, 2024
4
0
Beaverton OR.
I have not done that as I understood SIP protects the system from running unknown apps or unknown code, so it didn't feel like it would affect this problem. I read this as the system seems to think there's something in the deleted app that is in use somewhere but lsof shows no trace of that app name and when you open the trash bin it is empty... yet system thinks this app is "busy" somehow.
 

Bigwaff

Contributor
Sep 20, 2013
1,954
1,283
Reboot into Recovery. Disable SIP. Boot into Safe. Empty Trash. Boot into Recovery. Re-enable SIP.
 

ProTruckDriver

macrumors 6502
Jul 28, 2016
283
340
Virginia
I don't know if this will help but I had a file / app in the trash and I couldn't empty it from the trash. When I sent the file to the trash, iCloud was still showing it where I put it on the computer. I had to delete the file in iCloud, then empty the trash bin, rebooted and the file was gone for good.
 
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