Starting October 13, 2020, Google will automatically delete items in your Google My Drive trash after 30 days. Previously, items in your trash folder were retained indefinitely until you permanently deleted them. This change matches the policies of other G Suite products and services, such as Gmail, and will help make sure that items you trash are actually deleted as expected.
If you have not already, you may begin to see banners or pop-ups across Google Drive and Google Drive File Stream alerting you of the upcoming changes.
Any items already in trash on October 13, 2020, will remain there for 30 days. After the 30-day period, items that have been in trash for longer than 30 days will begin to be automatically deleted.
Furthermore,
- These changes affect items that are trashed from any device.
- Items deleted via Google Drive File Stream will be purged from the system trash after 30 days. There is no impact to Google Backup and Sync behavior.
- Items in a Google shared drive’s trash are already automatically deleted after 30 days.
For more information, see Google’s Delete and restore files in Google Drive.