What is WordPress Trash?

The WordPress trash functionality stores all deleted posts, pages, and comments from your website. It has a similar function as the Recycle Bin on your PC or Trash on Mac. 

The deleted items remain in the trash folder for 30 days. In case you delete an item by accident, you can restore it during that period. After that, they will be permanently deleted.

Only users with permission to delete WordPress content — like administrators and editors — can access this folder. You can find the trash folders on the admin page of each content type.

Keep reading on this article as I will show you how to access and empty your trash folder as well as restore deleted items. 

How to Empty the Trash in WordPress

Each content type has a designated trash folder. To access it, you need to navigate to the content’s admin page from your WordPress dashboard. 

Let’s assume you want to empty your post’s trash folder. You can do the process by following these steps: 

1. Go to the Posts admin page, then select the Trash page. 

2. Click Empty Trash to remove your posts permanently.

If you want to only remove several posts from your trash folder, you can use the Bulk Actions feature. Here’s how to do it:

1. On the Trash page, check the box next to the selected posts.
2. Select the Delete Permanently option from the Bulk Actions dropdown list, then click Apply.

Alternatively, you can remove an individual post by hovering over it and selecting Delete Permanently link.

These tutorials also apply for removing pages and comments from their respective trash folder.

How to Restore Items from the Trash

If you accidentally move an item to the trash folder, you can recover it by following the same process as emptying your trash. The only difference is that you select the Restore link from the Bulk Actions dropdown list. 

While it’s possible to restore posts, pages, and comments from the trash folder, you cannot recover any deleted media files. Once you remove files from the media library, they are gone for good.

Deleting Media Files

Since the media library has no trash folder, removing an item from the Media admin page will be a permanent action.

To remove media files from your site, you can do the following steps:

1. Navigate to the Media page from your WordPress dashboard.
2. Select the file that you want to remove, click Delete Permanently. 

3. To remove more than one image, click Bulk Select then hit Delete Permanently. 

Conclusion

The WordPress trash functionality stores posts, pages, and comments deleted from your site. Having this folder on your site allows you to restore any content you removed accidentally.

You can access the trash folder from the WordPress admin page of each deletable content type to empty it or restore a deleted item. All files stored in the trash folder will be permanently deleted after 30 days.

I hope this article gives you a better understanding of WordPress trash functionality. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.