The recycle bin icon is one of the most representative and well-known elements of Windows operating systems. Its function is as simple as it is important because it allows us to do this remove everything we no longer needand it’s very curious because it works like a real trash can.

Let me explain when we throw something in the trash in real life, the thing It’s still there and we can restore it. The same thing happens with the recycle bin in Windows, when we delete something stored in it, we still have a chance to recover it.

If it is clear to us that we will not need what is in the recycling bin we will have to empty it. This action will permanently delete all its contents and restore the space it occupied on the corresponding storage drive.

This is the default behavior of the recycle bin can be easily changed through the settings menu to better adapt it to our preferences, and in this article I will explain how you can do it step by step in a very simple way.

Delete files immediately

If you don’t want to delete files in two steps, you can set the recycle bin to automatically delete everything you send to it, so you won’t have to empty it to finish deleting the file. To configure this option, you must do the following:

• Right-click on the recycle bin icon and go to “Properties”.
• Now check the “Delete files immediately when deleting them” option.
• Click “OK” and that’s it.

You can change this option at any time by repeating the same process but unchecking the option to delete files immediately.

How to change the reserved space in the trash

We repeat the previous steps and right-click on the trash can icon. We enter properties and we select the unit corresponding repository. If we have several drives, we have to select the one we want to manage and repeat the process with each one if we want to change the reserved space applied to all our storage drives.

• We go to “Settings for the selected location”.
• In “Custom size” we only have to change the maximum size, expressed in megabytes, to the amount we want to reserve. For comparison, 1 gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes, so if we want to reserve 100 GB, we will need to reserve 102,400 megabytes.
• We click on the Accept button and that’s it, the new configuration starts to be used immediately.

The space reserved for the Recycle Bin is important because it determines the maximum capacity it has to store deleted files. If it exceeds this maximum it will automatically start deleting the oldest files leave room for the newest ones to come, so keep that in mind.

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