Trash auto-empty after deleting files from external drive in MacBook Pro with macOS Sonoma 14.7.6

Question

Trash auto-empty after deleting files from external drive in MacBook Pro with macOS Sonoma 14.7.6

Has anyone seen this? When I dragged useless .pdfs, .app and .exe from a Lexar backup drive to the Trash (just wanted the disk), Trash autoemptied after a few moments. Poof! Adios. New behavior since I upgraded to 14.7.6. Not set to auto-empty after 30 days.

Cannot access Trash folder at ~/.Trash even after showing hidden files via Finder UI. Console lets me cd but when try to list contents says ls "Operation not permitted". Perms are rwx for owner on the .Trash directory and I am owner (and admin), so am confused.

Added a random screenshot .png to Trash, it stayed and can see it in the UI by double-clicking on the trash icon (but not on OS).

Any ideas what is going on? If it's not PEBCAK, am fearing infestation at this point.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Pro (2021)

Posted on May 19, 2025 07:23 PM

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Answer 1

May 20, 2025 03:29 AM in response to Meh_Hmph_Urgh

Regarding the external drive: how is it formatted?

If the user somehow lacks permission to acess the .Trashes folder in an external drive, the files may be deleted immediately - but then you were supposed to have been shown an alert and asked to confirm. Something like this:

Regarding the ~/.Trash folder, something appears to wrong with permissions...

Running this in Terminal:

ls -ld ~/.Trash

I get this (I masked out my username):

drwx------+ 14 (myusername)  staff  448 May 19 16:45 /Users/(myusername)/.Trash

Do you get the same drwx and a +? Do you also have the group set to "staff"? Or something different there?

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