from Hacker News

When is Delete a delete not Trash

by minroot on 3/25/25, 11:39 AM with 2 comments

I have been in many occasion troubled by the fact that Delete icon, or The word delete doesn't mean delete something. Rather it means move to trash. For example in Gmail that is the case. I was trying to help someone about their Gmail account not having much space, I saw Gmail was taking up like 14+ GB of space, so I told him to delete mails from Inbox. My bad I didn't realize that delete isn't delete, and they have to clear up Trash.

Friends would ask their computer doesn't have storage, yet they barely have something on it.

I wonder, on how may occasions people found themselves in trouble because the Delete button/icon isn't "deleting" things?

  • by theandrewbailey on 3/25/25, 12:13 PM

    Running out of space because of a full trash is a better problem to have than delete meaning "destroyed and gone forever", because that would result in people being screwed because they deleted something that they shouldn't have. Maybe more platforms should have a policy that all trashed items older than 30-365 days will be automatically deleted for good.

  • by LinuxBender on 3/25/25, 12:36 PM

    This may not be useful to your friend but if you enable IMAPs in the Google account settings assuming this is still a thing as Google removes services almost weekly and they use an IMAP(s) client such as Thunderbird [1a][1b] then it is easier to see what files are really there and also easier to remove them. I do not use Google so I do not know if this is still an option in the Google account settings not to be confused with gmail settings.

    [1a] - https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/mobile/

    [1b] - https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/