gio-trash

Move specific files to the trash bin

$ gio trash [path/to/file_or_directory1] [path/to/file_or_directory2] ...

$ gio trash --list

$ gio trash trash://[id]

gio trash [options] [file...]

gio trash moves files to the trash bin instead of permanently deleting them, following the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification. Files are placed in ~/.local/share/Trash/ with metadata to enable restoration.
This is the command-line equivalent of dragging files to the trash in GNOME Files (Nautilus). Trashed files can be viewed in the file manager's Trash location or listed with gio trash --list. Files from external drives are trashed to a .Trash-UID directory on that drive.

--list

List items in the trash bin

Empty the trash bin permanently

Ignore non-existent files

Trash storage is per-filesystem; trashing files from a full filesystem may fail. Very large files consume disk space until the trash is emptied. Some filesystems (like FAT on USB drives) may not support full trash metadata.

gio trash replaced the older gvfs-trash command when GLib consolidated GVfs utilities into the gio tool in 2016. The underlying FreeDesktop.org Trash specification dates back to 2004.

gio(1), rm(1), trash-cli(1)