How to Fix macOS Finder Empty Trash Hang

I'm still on macOS 13 Ventura. For a very long time now, my macOS Finder Empty Trash hangs. I've tried all the old tricks (any old websearch shows those). Nothing worked. I didn't want to create a new user folder. If I cancel the empty trash then it finally empties. So I've lived with it.

Today I finally fixed it! I ran this:

lsof | grep Trash

And what do you know? Some process has /Users/james/.Trash/iPhotoLibrary (or something like that) open. Well, that file doesn't exist. So I tried to kill it. But it didn't die so I kill -9 it. Trash empties! And what's even better? It doesn't hang anymore! Yay!

Published: 2025-02-14, last edited: 2025-02-14