Where is the Recycle Bin in Windows 10? 9 ways to open it

The Windows 10 Recycle Bin is a second chance to recover files or folders you previously deleted from your computer or device. But to locate any discarded items, you first need to open the Recycle Bin folder. This tutorial answers the question “Where is the Recycle Bin in Windows 10?”, letting you choose the most comfortable of these nine ways to reach the Windows 10 Recycle Bin location:

1. Use the Recycle Bin shortcut from the Windows 10 Desktop

By default, the Windows 10 Recycle Bin should be present in the upper-left corner of your Desktop. We find this the easiest way to access the Recycle Bin. Find the icon on your Desktop, then either select it and press Enter on your keyboard, or double-click or double-tap on it to open the folder. Alternatively, you can also right-click or press-and-hold on the icon to open a contextual menu. Click or tap on Open.

TIP: If the Recycle Bin icon is not shown on your Desktop, we included some ways to recover it in our tutorial: The Windows 10 Recycle Bin: All you need to know.

2. Search Windows 10 for the Recycle Bin

You can always count on the Windows 10 search to bring back the appropriate results. Insert “recycle bin” in your taskbar’s search field, and then click or tap on the appropriate result or on Open from the right side of the search box.

3. Open the Recycle Bin using its Start Menu shortcut

While, by default, the Recycle Bin doesn’t have a Start Menu shortcut, you can pin it there just like you would any other shortcut.

Right-click or press-and-hold on the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop, and then click or tap on “Pin to Start.“

Your new shortcut is added to the tile section of the Start Menu, and you can now use it to open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin.

4. Use File Explorer’s address bar to open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin

The Windows 10 Recycle Bin location can be reached using File Explorer, by following the next steps. Open File Explorer and click or tap on an empty area in your address bar to edit it.

Type “recycle bin” in the address bar, and then hit Enter on your keyboard or click or tap on the Recycle Bin result displayed underneath to access the folder.

You can also click or tap on the first “>” (greater than sign) from File Explorer’s address bar.

This opens a menu where you can access the Recycle Bin by clicking or tapping on it.

Alternatively, select the Desktop option from the menu.

This opens the Desktop folder, from which you can also access the Recycle Bin.

NOTE: Keep in mind that the Desktop folder displays the Recycle Bin and the other locations regardless of whether they’re actually visible on your Windows 10 Desktop. If having them on your Desktop sounds like a good idea, read How to restore default Windows shortcuts and their icons.

5. Open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin from File Explorer

All the files you delete are displayed in the main Recycle Bin folder, but each partition of your hard drive has a Recycle Bin. You can use this folder to access the Windows 10 Recycle Bin, but the process is a bit more complicated.

First, make sure that you can see the hidden system protected files in Windows 10. Then, use File Explorer to access This PC > Windows (C:). A folder called $Recycle.Bin is displayed. Open it.

NOTE: The Recycle Bin is displayed on all the drives of your PC, not only on C:, so the path we used could easily become This PC > D:.

When you open the $Recycle.Bin folder, you can see the Windows 10 Recycle Bin folder.

6. Access the Recycle Bin location using the Run window

You can also use the Run window to access the Windows 10 Recycle Bin location. First, use the keyboard shortcut Win + R or another way to open Run. Then, insert the command shell:desktop and either press the Enter key, or click or tap the OK button.

If the Desktop window that opens next looks familiar, that’s because we also accessed it from File Explorer’s address bar in the fourth section of this tutorial. You can see the Windows 10 Recycle Bin displayed in it.

You can also open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin directly from the Run window by inserting a slightly longer command: shell:RecycleBinFolder.

Press OK or Enter on your keyboard, and the Recycle Bin immediately opens.

7. Use File Explorer’s Quick access to open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin

If you use File Explorer often, you might want to open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin more easily from it. You can create a Recycle Bin shortcut in File Explorer’s Quick access. Grab the Recycle Bin icon by pressing-and-holding on it, and then drag and drop it onto the File Explorer’s shortcut displayed on your taskbar. The “Pin to File Explorer” message is displayed.

You can then see a pane with your Pinned and Frequent locations. The Recycle Bin is added to the list.

You can now open the Windows 10 Recycle Bin from the Quick access shortcuts in File Explorer.

8. Access the Recycle Bin from its taskbar shortcut

In Windows 10, you can create a shortcut for the Recycle Bin and pin it to the taskbar. The process is a bit complicated, and we go over it in detail in 9 ways to pin shortcuts to the Windows 10 taskbar.

9. Open the Recycle Bin from PowerShell

You can also start PowerShell, and type the command: start shell:RecycleBinFolder. Don’t forget to press Enter on your keyboard, and the Recycle Bin is opened in File Explorer.

How do you prefer to access the Windows 10 Recycle Bin?

We prefer using our Desktop shortcut to interact with the Recycle Bin folder. However, we do sometimes use File Explorer’s address bar to reach the Windows 10 Recycle Bin location also. What about you? Which way to access the Recycle Bin do you prefer? Let us know in a comment below.

What is the equivalent of the bin directory for Windows?

Is there an equivalent to bin for Windows? If so, how can I access it from the command prompt?

5 Answers 5

There’s nothing actually special about /bin on Unix/Linux at all. It’s just the location where executable files (including scripts, which aren’t actually binary files) are placed by convention, and it is included in the PATH environment variable by default for all users. As Ryan says, the \Windows\System32 directory on Windows is also in PATH for all Windows users (and, even if it isn’t, Windows’ program loader will search there anyhow).

You can easily create your own equivalent of /bin on Windows. To make it system-wide, place it somewhere like the root of the file system (as in C:\bin ) or under an already-restricted location like \Windows\System32\bin ), and add it to the PATH environment variable for all users. For a per-user location, create the directory in your own profile ( %USERPROFILE%\bin ) and add it to your account’s PATH environment variable. Windows combines the per-user and system-wide PATH environment variables, so anything in the machine PATH variable is also added to any user’s PATH , but not the other way around.

Of course, you’ll have to add files / scripts / shortcuts / symlinks to your bin directory yourself. Windows installers don’t expect such a thing, and won’t put files there automatically the way that Linux installers will usually do.

About $Recycle.bin, Recycler and System Volume Information Folders in Windows

As you might expect, there are many files and folders hidden away in Windows that deal with important tasks such as keeping the system running or allowing certain features to function. A couple of examples of this are Hiberfil.sys and Pagefile.sys that reside in the root of your C drive.

You have to enable the show hidden files and protected operating system files settings in Control Panel Folder Options for these and other files to become viewable. More folders in the root of C which also become visible after unhiding are $Recycle.bin or Recycler and System Volume Information. But just what are these folders for?

The first thing about hidden files and folders in general is that they’re usually not made visible for a reason, which is often a sign that you’re not supposed to play around with them. But also, like many things in Windows, if something isn’t behaving correctly or the behaviour looks odd, you might want to have a closer look.

So what are the $Recycle.bin, Recycler and System Volume Information folders all about?

The System Volume Information Folder

The System Volume Information folder is a hidden folder in the root of your C drive that the Windows System Restore tool uses to store its information and restore points. It’s not just System Restore data that gets stored in here though and the Windows Indexing Service uses it to store search databases, the Volume Shadow Copy Service creates live system backup data and also Distributed Link Tracking stores database information to repair shortcuts and linked documents. Check Disk logs are also saved here.

There will actually be a System Volume Information folder created on every partition on your computer, including external hard drives and even sometimes flash drives. Because it’s the storage location for System Restore points, if System Restore backs up files that are infected with viruses or other malware, it becomes a problem. Most antivirus software cannot delete viruses from System Volume Information because it’s a highly protected folder. To verify this yourself, simply double click on the folder and you will receive an error “C:\System Volume Information is not accessible. Access is denied”.

What you need to do is either give the appropriate permissions to the currently logged on user for full access to the System Volume Information folder, or delete all the previously created restore points to remove any viruses attached to them. Here we show you both methods.

Turning off System Restore

Turning off System Restore completely will remove all your restore points from the System Volume Information folder, removing anything malicious attached to them. After turning System Restore off, restart your computer and then re-enable it again once your system is free of viruses. It will then create a new and clean restore point. By default, System Restore is automatically turned on in all versions of Windows that have it, and you can turn it off from:

1. Go to Control Panel -> System and click on System Protection (XP users simply click the System Restore tab)

2a. For Windows XP, simply click the “Turn off System Restore” box and press OK. You can also adjust the percentage of the drive System Restore can occupy.

2b. For Windows Vista and above the process is slightly more complicated. Look in the list of available drives, click on any that have Protection set to On and press the Configure button. Then select “Turn off system protection” and click OK. Users just wanting to empty all restore points to free up some space, simply click on Delete.

To free up space by deleting restore points you can also use a utility like the popular CCleaner although it won’t delete all restore points and will leave the most recent point in tact.

Accessing the System Volume Information Folder

As mentioned earlier, the System Volume Information folder is protected by Windows and you can’t simply open it up and look at the contents because an access denied error message will popup. However, it is possible to gain access by setting the appropriate permissions for the folder, here’s the easy way to do it.

Because Windows XP deals differently with accessing folder security permissions depending on whether you’re using Home or Professional, the easiest solution is to use a context menu shortcut that works on both with a single click.

1. Download Take Ownership XP and extract the zip file.

2. Copy Subinacl.exe, TakeOwnershipFile.cmd and TakeOwnershipDir.cmd to your C:\Windows folder, then double click on Install_Take_Ownership_XP.reg to install the menu entry into the registry. SubInACL is a Microsoft utility to change user security for files, registry keys and services.

3. Now, go to the System Volume Information folder, right click on it and select “Take Ownership” from the menu.

You should be able to enter the folder and have a look around without receiving the error. To remove Take Ownership again, run Remove_Take_Ownership_XP.reg and delete the 3 files from the Windows folder. It’s still not possible or recommended to start deleting stuff from System Volume Information, more on that later.

For Windows Vista and above

This method also uses a Take Ownership context menu shortcut but is even easier to install as newer operating systems have a built in tool called Takedown.

1. Download Take Ownership and run the InstallTakeOwnership.reg inside the zip file to import the context menu shortcut.

2. Right click on System Volume Information and select “Take Ownership”, then you can get into the folder straight away.