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description: "Jotaid's trash: deletion is soft, restorable at any time, never auto-purged — and how to reclaim the disk space afterwards."
---
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# Trash

Deleting a note does not destroy it. It goes to the **trash**.

## Restoring

- **Restore / Undo** appears immediately after a deletion
- After that, restore from the trash view at any time
- **Nothing is auto-purged on a timer**: the trash keeps everything until you empty it

To get there: click the list header in Note view (NOTES ⇄ TRASH); on iOS, switch in the pull-down panel.

## Emptying

**Empty Trash** removes everything permanently, **and it syncs** — the contents disappear from your other devices too.

> **A large trash asks twice**
>
> When the trash holds an unusually large number of items, Jotaid confirms again. That guard exists for one specific accident: a sync fault marking a mass of notes as deleted, after which a casual "empty" would put them beyond reach.

## Deleting a Container Is Not Deleting Notes

Deleting a [theme](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/themes) or [project](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/projects) asks what to do with its contents: **dissolve the container** (children promoted to the parent) or **delete everything**. The first is the default — what you usually want to undo is the grouping, not the notes.

Deleting a [node](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/manage-nodes) touches no notes at all: the `[[ ]]` in their bodies reverts to ordinary text.

## Reclaiming Space

Emptying the trash does not immediately return disk space — the database file keeps the holes. **Settings → Storage → Clean Storage** compacts the database and frees the space held by deleted images.

That optimisation **pauses automatically** while a sync is in flight, so the two never rewrite the same store at once.

## Next Steps

- [Backup & Restore](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/backup) — Take one before emptying
- [Sync](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/sync) — Deletions travel too
- [Themes](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/themes) — Dissolving a container versus deleting its contents