recycle

A safe rm replacement for macOS. Moves files to the native Trash instead of permanently deleting them — with full Finder "Put Back" support.

Great as a safety net for AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) that run rm -rf — everything stays recoverable.

Install

brew install oobagi/tap/recycle

Then alias it in ~/.zshrc:

alias rm='recycle'

Usage

rm file.txt                # trash a file
rm -rf node_modules/       # trash a directory
rm --list                  # see what's in trash (with previews)
rm --restore file.txt      # put it back
rm --empty                 # permanently empty trash

Use /bin/rm when you actually need permanent deletion.

How it works

All operations go through Finder's native APIs — no config files, no metadata directories.

• Trash → tell application "Finder" to delete (native Put Back)
• Restore → xattr stores original path on the trashed file
• List/Empty → Finder AppleScript

License

MIT