I often find myself wanting to delete files on my Mac without needing to empty the Trash after. This is particularly useful when deleting large files and/or files on mounted (external) drives.
The following is a super-simple way to add a service to your Finder menu allowing you to skip the Trash and save some time (and space).
Step 1: Open the Automator.app and choose Service
Step 2: Change the ‘Service receives selected’ selector to “files or folders” and change the ‘in’ selector to “Finder.app”
Step 3: Add a ‘Ask for Confirmation’ action from the Utilities Library and enter your Message text.
Step 4: Add a ‘Run Shell Script’ action from the Utilities Library
Step 5: Add the following arguments into the text area (replacing ‘cat’)
for f in "$@"
do
rm -rf "$f"
done
afplay "/System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component/Contents/SharedSupport/SystemSounds/finder/empty trash.aif"Step 6: Save the Service (name the service accordingly (ex: Permanently Delete))
Step 7: Test – Create/select a test file you want to delete, right-click (or Control-Click) and choose Permanently Delete (or whatever you named your service) from the Services menu.
