Stop deleting files by accident

If you come from Windows, the first time you use rm can be a bit of a shock: there’s no Recycle Bin. The file is just… gone.

That’s bad enough for humans, but it’s even scarier now that terminal agents can run commands on your behalf.

Make rm send files to the Trash

On Arch (and Omarchy), you can install trash-cli, which behaves like a command-line recycle bin.

sudo pacman -S trash-cli

Then alias rm to trash in your shell config (for bash, that’s ~/.bashrc):

alias rm='trash'~/.bashrc

From now on, rm some-file sends the file to ~/.local/share/Trash.

That’s the same trash location used by Nautilus, the file explorer in Omarchy.

Permanently delete when you really mean it

Sometimes you do want a permanent delete. In that case, call the real rm command directly:

command rm some_file.doc

Empty the trash automatically

The Trash doesn’t empty itself. You can purge items older than N days:

trash-empty 30 # delete files older than 30 days

You can run that manually, or automate it. On Hyprland, one simple option is to add it to ~/.config/hypr/autostart.conf:

# Empty the trash once every day
exec-once = trash-empty 30~/.config/hypr/autostart.conf

That’s it — safer deletes, and a much smaller chance of a “well… crap” moment.