There is no restore option when I right click a folder in my trash. Did I do something wrong with my computer to cause it to do away with this option?

The options when I right-click a folder in my Trash

  • How did the folder get there? You can generally only 'put back' if the Finder deleted something, not if a script or app deleted it.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 2 '20 at 17:55
  • @Tetsujin now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I deleted them from the Visual Studio Code app.
    – fairground
    Dec 2 '20 at 18:15
  • Let me throw together a rough answer, in that case...
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 2 '20 at 18:31
  • Does this answer your question? How to recover file from Trash
    – mmmmmm
    May 1 '21 at 21:24

From comments, it appears the folder may have been deleted by an app/script.

I general, the only time the Put Back flag is created is if the file/folder is deleted in the 'normal' way, by the user themselves, in Finder.

I'm afraid i don't know how it does this or the spec of the tagging it uses - perhaps someone smarter than me could provide analysis on that - I just know this through empiricism.

  • 2
    This post touches on how the Finder "knows" where to "Put Back" a file—essentially, it adds an entry to the Trash's .DS_Store file. Try running hexdump -C ~/.Trash/.DS_Store to see the stored entries (though also note that there are other .Trash folders on disk, like in iCloud Drive, that have their own .DS_Store but are aggregated by Finder into the one "Trash" view).
    – aaplmath
    Jan 1 '21 at 20:51

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