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).
4. Right-click the pinned icon to see the live item count header along with Empty Recycle Bin and Open Recycle Bin.

Moving the shortcut

Want the shortcut somewhere other than the Desktop? Use Move shortcut... in RecycleBinSettings.exe rather than dragging the .lnk file yourself. The app remembers wherever you move it to, so future language/behavior changes keep updating the correct file instead of quietly leaving it behind and recreating a stray copy on the Desktop. After moving it, (re-)pin it to the taskbar from its new location - an existing pin is its own independent copy and won't follow the file automatically.

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