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How to delete files on a Chromebook

HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook top down view showing keyboard and touchpad.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Your Chromebook has quickly become your everyday computer. Using it for just about everything, including web browsing, word processing, gaming, and social media, we bet there’s going to come a time when you need to delete some files from your PC. Doing so will not only allow you to store more media locally, but it should also help to improve the performance of your go-to Chromebook device.

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Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • Any Chromebook system

Deleting your Chromebook files is very easy, and we’ve put together this guide to help you through the process.

How to delete files via My Files

Step 1: Open My Files.

The My Files option on a Chromebook.
screenshot / Digital Trends

Step 2: Right-click on the file you want to remove from the system and select the Delete option.

It should be stressed that a Chromebook-based machine doesn’t have a recycle bin. As such, once you delete any file, it can’t be recovered and will be removed from the system completely.

Deleting a file or folder on a Chromebook.
screenshot / Digital Trends

How to delete images on Chromebook

If you’re attempting to delete images on Chromebook, it can only be achieved through a specific method. You won’t be able to delete them via the Images folder. Similarly, files from the Recent or Video folders cannot be deleted. Instead, locate them through My Files and delete them there.

Step 1: Open My Files.

Step 2: Now open the location the images were originally placed in. If it’s situated within the Downloads folder, open that and proceed to delete the image(s).

Deleting an image on a Chromebook.
screenshot / Digital Trends

How to delete downloads on Chromebook

As Chromebook systems don’t typically come with a huge amount of local storage space, files within the Download folder are subjected to automatic deletion if the system is running out of the space it needs to function.

As such, you may want to delete or back up certain files and folders in Downloads before that happens, or you simply may no longer have any use for those files.

Step 1: Select the My Files folder.

Step 2: Select Downloads.

Step 3: Choose the files and folders you want to remove from the system by right-clicking on them, and then choose the Delete option.

Deleting files from the Downloads folder on a Chromebook.
screenshot / Digital Trends

For more helpful guides on Chromebook, especially if you’re a new user to the ecosystem, then check out our tutorials on how to add, disable, and remove apps in Chrome OS, and how to zip and unzip files.

Zak Islam
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Zak Islam was a freelance writer at Digital Trends covering the latest news in the technology world, particularly the…
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