Force it to behave in new and useful ways

Up until Windows 8, the Recycle Bin was just that: a container for your deleted files. In Microsoft Windows 11 and 10, however, you can force the Recycle Bin to behave in several new and valuable ways.

You can change the maximum size of the Recycle Bin, set it to automatically empty itself after a certain number of days, or bypass the Recycle Bin while deleting files. This tutorial explains how to perform all three of these actions on any Windows 11 or 10 machine.

The Recycle Bin in Windows 11 and 10 has a default storage space of about 5% of the total size of your disk volume. With that in mind, let's say you have 500GB of space allocated to your volume. For this volume, the Recycle Bin will automatically delete your oldest files when more than 25GB of space is used.