How to Empty the Recycle Bin for All Users in Windows

Here’s the part most guides skip: every user account has its own Recycle Bin. On each drive they live in a hidden, protected folder — C:\$Recycle.Bin\<SID> — one subfolder per user. So when you empty the Recycle Bin from your desktop, you only empty your bin. The other accounts’ deleted files are still taking up space.

The catch with Clear-RecycleBin

PowerShell’s Clear-RecycleBin is handy, but the official docs are explicit: it “clears the contents of the current user’s recycle bin.” Running it as one admin does not empty everyone else’s. Useful for yourself or in a per-user logon script — not for “all users at once.”

Clear-RecycleBin -Force

(Add -DriveLetter C to target one drive.)

Empty every user’s bin (admin command)

To clear all users’ Recycle Bins on a drive in one shot, delete the protected $Recycle.Bin folder from an admin Command Prompt. Windows recreates the folder structure automatically the next time someone deletes a file — this is safe:

rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.Bin

Repeat per drive if you have more than one (rd /s /q D:\$Recycle.Bin, etc.). Because the bin folders are owned per-user, only an administrator can remove them all this way.

This permanently deletes the files in every user’s bin — the same as choosing Empty Recycle Bin, just for everyone at once. There’s no undo, so be sure before you run it.

Disk Cleanup and Storage Sense

• Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr) has a Recycle Bin checkbox, but run normally it only clears the current user’s bin. To run it hands-off and on a schedule, see Automate Disk Cleanup with /sageset and /sagerun.
• Storage Sense (Settings → System → Storage → Storage Sense) can auto-empty the Recycle Bin after a set number of days — again per the signed-in user, but a good “set and forget” for a single-user PC.

FAQ

Why didn’t emptying the bin free up the space I expected? Another account’s bin still holds files. Use the rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.Bin command (as admin) to clear them all, or sign into each account and empty its bin.

Is deleting $Recycle.Bin dangerous? No — it’s just the container for already-deleted files, and Windows rebuilds it on demand. It does not touch live files in C:\Users. The only consequence is that those binned files can no longer be restored.

Can I schedule this? Yes — put the rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.Bin line in a Task Scheduler task running as SYSTEM/Administrator, or use the cleanmgr /sagerun method for a softer, item-by-item cleanup.

Sources: Microsoft Learn — Clear-RecycleBin (clears the current user’s bin), Microsoft Learn — cleanmgr command