JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 135sometimes repeating that operation several
times, before the list appears.)
If after step 6 the site still doesn’t work,
but you were able to use a private
browsing window or another browser, it’s
time to contact the site for technical
support help.
HOW TO DELETE A FILE THAT
MACOS SAYS IS IN USE
Sometimes macOS tries to help you by not
letting you carry out actions that would
break the system or software you’re using.
There are extra levels of warnings
available that you might choose to turn off
or bypass.
When you have files in the Trash, select
Finder → Empty Trash prompts you as to
whether you really meant to empty the
trash. You click Empty Trash to proceed.
Holding down Option when selecting
Finder → Empty Trash bypasses the
warning. (You can also press Command-
Option-Shift-Delete to bypass it.)
But if macOS thinks a file is in use by
an application or the system, even that
bypass doesn’t help. When you empty the
trash, your Mac will show a warning dialog
that reads, “The operation can’t be
completed because the item ‘name’ is in
use.” Three buttons appear: Skip, Stop,
and Continue.
Apple advises in a support note (go.
macworld.com/trsh) a series of actions you
should take, that can be summarized as a
cascading order. Try an item and then try
to use Empty Trash:
> Quit the app
> Restart the Mac normally.
> Restart the Mac in Safe Mode, delete
startup items that might be the problem,
then restart normally.
> Start up with macOS Recovery and
use Disk Utility to repair the drive.
You can also use the Terminal
command lsof, which tracks all files in
use by even the lowest of low-level parts
of the system. In Terminal, type lsof |
grep -i followed by a space and part of
the file name, and see if it shows what app
or system component still
has its hooks in. (You can
read more about lsof in
this previous Mac 911
column [go.macworld.com/
lsof].)
However, sometimes a
file just doesn’t want to go,
and you’ve donemacOS prompts you when you try to delete items using Option plus
Finder → Empty Trash.