Recycle Bin Taskbar

Pin the Recycle Bin to your Windows taskbar with a right-click jump list for Empty Recycle Bin and Open Recycle Bin complete with a live item count/size header, optional confirmation and sound, toast notifications, and a Fluent-styled settings app for choosing the jump list's language. (program coded with Claude AI)

Features

• Pin the Recycle Bin to your taskbar with a proper jump list — no more right-click → Empty Recycle Bin from the desktop icon.
• Live status header showing the current item count and total size (e.g. "17 items, 1.6 GB"), refreshed automatically every time you use the jump list or click the pinned icon.
• 14 languages for the jump list text: English, Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Русский, 简体中文, 日本語, 한국어, Nederlands, Polski, Türkçe, العربية .
• Optional confirmation prompt and sound before emptying (off by default, matching classic silent behavior).
• Toast notification after emptying (on by default).
• A small Fluent/Windows 11-styled settings app (built with WPF-UI) to change the language and toggle the behaviors above, with a live "current status" readout.

What's included

• EmptyRecycleBin.exe — creates the desktop/Start Menu shortcuts and registers the taskbar jump list. Also handles the /empty and /open actions triggered from the jump list.
• RecycleBinSettings.exe — the settings window.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• .NET 8 SDK (only needed to build)

Build

dotnet publish RecycleBinTaskbar -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true
dotnet publish RecycleBinSettings -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true

Each command produces a single self-contained .exe in that project's bin\Release\net8.0-windows*\win-x64\publish\ folder. Copy both exes into the same folder — RecycleBinSettings.exe looks for EmptyRecycleBin.exe right next to itself.

Prefer a smaller download over a no-dependencies exe? Drop --self-contained true (and the two -p: flags) and use --self-contained false instead. This needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime installed on the machine running it, but produces a much smaller build.

Setup

1. Place the two .exe files in a safe folder for example inside your user directory.
2. Run EmptyRecycleBin.exe once. This creates a Recycle Bin shortcut on your Desktop (and one in your Start Menu, used for notification delivery).
3. Drag the Desktop shortcut onto your taskbar to pin it (or right-click it in the Start menu → Pin to taskbar). Or alternatively, you can move it in another directory or even change it's icon since this is a shortcut, and only then pin it to your taskbar!
4. Right-click the pinned icon to see the live item count header along with Empty Recycle Bin and Open Recycle Bin.

Changing settings

Run RecycleBinSettings.exe to:

• Pick the jump list language
• Toggle the confirmation prompt, sound, and post-empty notification
• Check the current item count/size, with a manual refresh option

Click Apply — changes take effect immediately, no need to re-run EmptyRecycleBin.exe or re-pin anything.

Project structure

RecycleBinTaskbar.Shared/   Shared code: localization strings, settings storage,
                             Recycle Bin status queries, shortcut/jump-list logic
RecycleBinTaskbar/          Main app (EmptyRecycleBin.exe)
RecycleBinSettings/         Settings window (RecycleBinSettings.exe)

Contributing

Adding a language is just a matter of adding an entry to the dictionary in RecycleBinTaskbar.Shared/Localization.cs. PRs welcome.

License

MIT