Files Recycle Bin Design

🗑️ Files recycle bin - design

Issue #293 · PR #353 by @cloudcogsio · 5.4.0 · Code: Recycle bin - Developer Guide, Folder control - Developer Guide

The shape

• Deleting a file or folder in Files moves it to the Recycle bin on the desktop. A deleted folder is one entry holding everything in it, as in Windows.
• Restore puts it back where it was ("Name (2)" if the name is taken - never a new version, never an overwrite). Delete permanently and Empty remove it for good, stored files included.
• Files → Settings → Recycle bin (Cap::FILES_RECYCLE) sets how long deleted items are kept; a background job then deletes them. 0 keeps them for ever. Until it is saved, nothing is deleted automatically.
• Permissions are those the folder had before it was deleted. View to see an entry, Modify to restore or delete it for good. Hidden means not found.

Decided

Date	Question	Decision
16 Nov 2026	What does deleting a folder need?	Modify on the folder and on every folder inside it, however deep - as Windows does. Otherwise it is refused outright.
16 Nov 2026	What does the refusal say?	Where the problem is, without a messy list and without leaking names (Ed: "we don't want someone to use this as a hack to find the filenames of a subfolder they don't have access to"). It names one blocking folder, and only one the person can see, then "and other items"; if none is visible, "it contains folders you do not have access to" - no names, no count.
16 Nov 2026	Moving a folder?	The same rule (Ed: "you shouldn't be able to move a folder if it contains things you don't have control over"). Copying is unchanged - it already copies only what you may download.
16 Nov 2026	How does an administrator find out what is in the way?	System → Debug Tools → D020, administrators only (Ed's idea): pick a person and a folder, see every folder and file inside with PASS or FAIL and why.
16 Nov 2026	The retention job and a folder holding something its deleter could not have deleted by hand	Keep it safe - never delete it (Ed: "leave it, keep it safe"), and make it abundantly clear: System → Maintenance → Deleted folders kept lists each one, why, and what to do; the job's run and the settings tab say how many.
16 Nov 2026	Someone's folder inside a deleted folder they cannot see	Shown in their bin as Deleted along with a folder above it - without the other folder's name - and Restore brings it back on its own, with exactly the same people able to open it.
16 Nov 2026	Things already in the bin when purging is first switched on	The clock starts then. They get the full period from the day the setting is saved, never "deleted within the hour".
16 Nov 2026	Delete permanently: Modify or Full control?	Modify, as the PR has it - the level that deleted it.
16 Nov 2026	The Recycle bin desktop icon - for everyone, or only people who have deleted something?	Everyone.

Open, deliberately

• Original location shows the full path of the folder an entry was in, as Search and the audit do, even where the person can only see part of that chain. Kept consistent with the rest of Files for now.

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See also: Files · Recycle bin - Developer Guide