General Empty Recycle Bin in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you different ways to empty the Recycle Bin for specific or all drives for your account or all users in Windows 11.

The Recycle Bin provides a safety net when deleting files or folders. When you delete any of these items from a drive, Windows places it in the Recycle Bin and the Recycle Bin icon changes from empty to full.

If you have multiple hard drives, partitions, or an external hard drive connected to your PC, each drive will have its own hidden $Recycle.Bin system folder and Recycle Bin settings.

Removable drives, such as USB flash drives and memory cards, do not have a Recycle Bin by default. Files deleted from removable drives are permanently deleted since they do not go to the Recycle Bin. You can enable the Recycle Bin for removable drives to have deleted files from them go to the Recycle Bin instead.

Each user account on the PC will have their own separate Recycle Bin, and will be referenced by their Security Identifier (SID) in each drive's hidden $Recycle.Bin system folder.







1 Right click on the Recycle Bin desktop icon, and click/tap on Empty Recycle Bin. (see screenshot below)







1 Open the Recycle Bin in File Explorer.

2 Click/tap on Empty Recycle Bin on the command bar. (see screenshot below)







1 Open the Recycle Bin in File Explorer.

2 Right click on the background of the Recycle Bin window, and click/tap on Empty Recycle Bin. (see screenshot below)







1 Use Option One below for how: (see screenshot below)








1 Use Option Two below for how: (see screenshot below)








1 Use Option Four below for how: (see screenshot below)









1 Open Windows Terminal, and select Windows PowerShell.

2 Copy and paste the command below into PowerShell, and press Enter. (see screenshot below)


3 When finished, you can close Windows Terminal if you like.








1 Open Windows Terminal, and select Windows PowerShell.

2 Type the command below into PowerShell, and press Enter. (see screenshot below)

Substitute <drive letter> in the command above with the actual drive letter (ex: "C") you want to empty the Recycle Bin for.

For example: Clear-RecycleBin -DriveLetter C -force -ErrorAction:Ignore

3 When finished, you can close Windows Terminal if you like.

You must be signed in as an administrator to use this option.

1 Open Windows Terminal (Admin), and select Command Prompt.

2 Type the command below into Windows Terminal (Admin), and press Enter. (see screenshot below)

Substitute <drive letter> in the command above with the actual drive letter (ex: "C") you want to empty the Recycle Bin for all users.

For example: rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.bin

3 When finished, you can close Windows Terminal (Admin) if you like.




That's it,
Shawn Brink