Trash Bin in Unity launcher shows full even when empty

Solution 1:

I had the same issue. Files that were deleted from a USB drive were causing the Trash to appear full even though it was empty. As soon as I emptied the trash with the USB drive mounted, the trash was cleared.

Solution 2:

I would just delete the files, and if the bin is still full I would open a Terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T), type "xkill" and press enter. This will change the mouse pointer into an X. Hover the mouse over the Unity Dashboard and press the left mouse button. This will kill the dashboard, and one second later it will come back.

EDIT: The xkill approach will kill the session and the apps running in it and you'll have to login again. It does result in an empty trashcan icon though. (Tested under 14.04): It appears this is a long standing bug with many duplicates see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-applets/+bug/269441

Solution 3:

The trash on the desktop tries to sum up all the trashes current user can access.

Each disk, each drive, has got its own trash, sort of speaking.

So (desktop) trash staying full after the usb stick is unplugged means :

• trash has not been emptied while usb stick was plugged in,
• deleted files on that usb stick are still present, they've just been moved to the "onboard" .trash folder but not actually deleted.

If that happens just plug in back that usb stick, or external drive, and deleted files will appear again inside the (desktop) trash. Now empty that trash and files from all "connected" trashes will be actually deleted.

It's not a bug. It's just how trashes work under linux-ubuntu.

Solution 4:

Found that deleting files from ext-HDD causes the trash bin to be full even though its not. The solution is to move the files you want to delete from external to trash-bin than empty. Or log out and log back in