Send2Trash

You can install the base package using pip. It uses ctypes to access native libraries, so no compilation is required.

To install with support for pywin32 (Windows) or pyobjc (macOS) to use native platform calls, use the nativeLib extra.

# Standard installation
python -m pip install -U send2trash

# Installation with native library support (recommended for Windows/macOS)
python -m pip install -U send2trash[nativeLib]

On systems enforcing PEP 668 (like recent Linux distributions), you should install Send2Trash within a virtual environment to avoid conflicts with the system Python.

# Create the environment
python -m venv .venv

# Activate on GNU/Linux or macOS
source .venv/bin/activate

# Activate on Windows
.venv\Scripts\activate

Import send2trash from the send2trash module to move files or directories to the system's native Trash or Recycle Bin. The function accepts either a single string path or a list of strings.

from send2trash import send2trash

# Send a single file to trash
send2trash('some_file')

# Send multiple files to trash
send2trash(['some_file1', 'some_file2'])

When using Send2Trash, you should be prepared to handle the following exceptions:

• send2trash.TrashPermissionError: Raised on Freedesktop platforms (Linux, BSD, etc.) when a file cannot be efficiently trashed. This typically happens when a file is on a different device than the user's home directory and the application lacks permission to create a .Trash or .Trash-$UID directory. This error inherits from PermissionError.
• OSError: Raised for any other problems encountered during the trashing process.

The send2trash command-line tool allows you to send one or more files or directories to the system trash instead of permanently deleting them. This works across multiple platforms.

Usage

send2trash [options] <files...>

Arguments

• files: One or more file or directory paths to be trashed. This is a required positional argument.

Options

• -v, --verbose: When enabled, the tool will print a confirmation message for each file successfully trashed: Trashed «<filename>».

Error Handling

If a file cannot be trashed (e.g., due to an OSError), the tool will print the error message to stderr and exit with status code 1.

send2trash file1.txt directory_name/ --verbose