General Enable or Disable Delete to Recycle Bin Confirmation Dialog in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable display delete to the Recycle Bin confirmation dialog for your account or all users in Windows 10 and 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.

By default, a delete confirmation dialog does not display when you delete a file or folder to the Recycle Bin.

If you delete a file or folder that's larger than the set maximum storage size of the drive's recycle bin, a This file is too big to recycle. Do you want to permanently delete it? confirmation dialog like below will always display.





EXAMPLE: Delete to Recycle Bin confirmation dialog







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


2 Check (on) of uncheck (off - default) Display delete confirmation dialog for what you want.

3 Click/tap on OK.

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

This option will apply to all drives with a Recycle Bin.

The Local Group Policy Editor is only available in the Windows 10/11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions.

All editions can use Option Three to configure the same policy.

1 Open the all users, specific users or groups, or all users except administrators Local Group Policy Editor for how you want this policy applied.

2 Navigate to the policy location below in the left pane of the Local Group Policy Editor. (see screenshot below)



3 In the right pane of File Explorer in the Local Group Policy Editor, double click/tap on the Display confirmation dialog when deleting files policy to edit it. (see screenshot above)

4 Do step 5 (enable) or step 6 (default) below for what you want.

This will override and prevent using Option One.

This is the default setting to allow using Option One.

7 You can now close the Local Group Policy Editor if you like.

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

This option will apply to all drives with a Recycle Bin.

1 Do step 2 (enable) or step 3 (default) below for what you want.

This will override and prevent using Option One.

(Contents of REG file for reference)

This is the default setting to allow using Option One.

(Contents of REG file for reference)

4 Save the REG file to your desktop.

5 Double click/tap on the downloaded REG file to merge it.

6 When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

7 Either restart the explorer process, sign out and sign in, or restart the computer to apply.

8 You can now delete the downloaded REG file if you like.


That's it,
Shawn Brink