A modern, faster, better Recycle Bin for Windows 11.
Restore files anywhere, copy them out, preview images — in a native Windows 11 look.
Installation · Usage · Performance · How it works · Troubleshooting · 简体中文
Windows' built-in Recycle Bin has barely changed in fifteen years. It can only restore files to the place they came from, it cannot show you what is inside a file, and it cannot take a copy out without removing the original.
Modern Recycle Bin replaces that interface with one written in HTML/CSS and rendered by WebView2 inside its own window, which makes a real Windows 11 look achievable — while all the file work still happens in native C# talking to the shell. It opens in a fraction of a second and keeps the Recycle Bin icon in your taskbar.
It is not a file manager and it does not touch anything outside the Recycle Bin. Installing it is a per-user, two-click operation, and uninstalling puts the system default straight back.
| Feature | What it means | |
|---|---|---|
| 📂 | Restore anywhere | The stock Recycle Bin can only put a file back where it came from. Here you can pick any folder. |
| 📋 | Copy out | Copy a file out of the bin and keep the original where it is — the stock bin cannot do this at all. |
| 🖼️ | Image previews | Select a picture and see a thumbnail on the right, instead of restoring it just to find out what it was. |
| 🎛️ | Filter by type | Images / video / audio / documents / archives / code / folders — plus live search over name, original path and type. |
| 🔀 | Conflict handling | When a file with the same name already exists, choose overwrite, skip, or keep both. |
| 🌗 | Windows 11 styling | Fluent dark theme, 40 px rows, soft rounded hover and selection, smooth motion, comfortable/compact density. |
| ⌨️ | Built for the keyboard | Enter restore · Delete purge · Ctrl+A select all · Ctrl+F search · F5 refresh · Ctrl+0/+/- zoom. |
| ⚡ | Instant | The window appears in about 100 ms and the full list is rendered in about 300 ms. |
| 📌 | Keeps its icon | Because the window belongs to this app, the taskbar shows the Recycle Bin icon — never a browser or Explorer icon. |
| Capability | Windows built-in | Modern Recycle Bin |
|---|---|---|
| Restore to the original location | ✅ | ✅ |
| Restore to a folder you choose | ❌ | ✅ |
| Copy a file out, keeping the original | ❌ | ✅ |
| Thumbnail preview of images | ❌ | ✅ |
| Search / filter by file type | ✅ | |
| Sort by clicking column headers | ✅ | ✅ |
| Choose how name conflicts are handled | ❌ | ✅ |
| Dark, Windows 11-styled interface | ❌ | ✅ |
| Adjustable row density and zoom | ❌ | ✅ |
| Works without administrator rights | — | ✅ |
Every control at a glance — the numbers match the list on the right.
- Look — click any file; pictures show a preview on the right.
- Get it back — double-click a row to restore it, or press Restore to… to put it somewhere else.
- Keep a copy — right-click → Copy to… takes a copy and leaves the original in the bin.
The main window. The details pane on the right shows the picture itself, plus type, size, original location and timestamps.
The installer. A single file, no administrator rights, and every change it makes can be undone from the same place.
- Download
ModernRecycleBinSetup.exefrom the latest release. - Run it. No administrator rights are required.
- Tick what you want:
- Create a desktop shortcut
- Let the desktop Recycle Bin open with this app — this writes one per-user registry key, and it is completely undone on uninstall.
- Done. Double-click the Recycle Bin on your desktop to try it.
To uninstall: run Uninstall.cmd inside the install folder, or
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ModernRecycleBin-Uninstall.exe. Uninstalling restores the
default Recycle Bin automatically and removes everything it created.
Download ModernRecycleBin-portable.zip, unpack it wherever you like, then
run RecycleBin.exe. Nothing is written to the registry — delete the folder and
it is gone.
On some networks github.com never answers — the download times out at 0 bytes —
while the release files themselves are fine. Two ways around it:
One-click. Paste this into PowerShell; it picks a working channel by itself, downloads the installer and starts it:
irm https://ghfast.top/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Dannyzzy/Modern-Recycle-Bin/main/Install-ModernRecycleBin.cmd -OutFile "$env:TEMP\mrb-install.cmd"; & "$env:TEMP\mrb-install.cmd"The download goes through PowerShell rather than curl on purpose: an accelerator sets a Windows proxy that curl ignores, so a machine where the browser opens GitHub can still fail to download. The script falls back to the ghfast.top mirror, checks that what arrived really is the installer, and prints every address it tried when both channels fail — it never fails quietly.
By hand. Open the mirror copy of the release page in a browser:
https://ghfast.top/https://github.com/Dannyzzy/Modern-Recycle-Bin/releases/latest
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
- WebView2 Runtime — preinstalled on Windows 11 and current Windows 10 builds. If it is missing, the installer says so and links you to Microsoft's official download; nothing else is needed.
The interface follows the same mental model as File Explorer, so there is nothing new to learn:
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| See what a file is | Click it — the details pane fills in, and images show a preview |
| Restore to where it came from | Double-click the row, press Enter, or click Restore |
| Restore somewhere else | Click Restore to… and choose any folder |
| Keep a copy without removing it | Right-click → Copy to… |
| Delete permanently | Delete, or right-click → Delete |
| Empty the whole bin | Empty Recycle Bin (the desktop icon updates too) |
| Find something | Type in the search box, or use the All types filter |
| Sort | Click any column header, or use the sort button in the toolbar |
| Change rows or text size | View → Comfortable / Compact, or hold Ctrl and scroll |
Right-click menu: Restore · Restore to… · Copy to… · Open original location · Properties · Copy original path · Delete permanently.
By default the app only adds an entry point: the desktop Recycle Bin opens it, and the normal empty/full icon state keeps updating because the app tells the shell whenever the bin changes. Everything else — right-click "Empty Recycle Bin" on the desktop, deleting files into the bin, Explorer's own Recycle Bin — keeps working exactly as before.
Startup was the hardest part to get right. Measured on the development machine (Windows 11, 125 % display scaling, 22 items in the bin):
| Stage | Time |
|---|---|
| Window visible | ~100 ms |
| WebView2 controller ready | ~175 ms |
| Page rendered | ~300 ms |
What made that possible, and what was measured along the way:
- Loading the UI by content, not by URL. Navigating to a virtual host name
(
https://something/index.html) made the WebView walk the full network stack, including proxy auto-discovery, which cost 2299 ms. Passing the HTML straight to the control (NavigateToString) dropped that to 301 ms — two seconds saved on every launch. - Starting the WebView2 runtime in parallel with building the window, instead of after it.
- No black flash. The WebView stays hidden until the page has painted, so the window shows its own themed background and a brief "Opening Recycle Bin…" message instead of a black rectangle while the runtime boots.
- The list is sent before the icons. Icons are produced afterwards on a dedicated thread and pushed as a second message that patches the rows in place. Icons depend on the shell's system image list, which is not thread-safe — generating them concurrently made most of them fail at random.
- Full-resolution icons. Row and details icons come from the shell's 256 px (jumbo) image list and are downscaled, rather than upscaling a 16 px icon. The window icon is a hand-built multi-size ICO (16/32/48/256 plus 20/24/40, which DPI scaling actually asks for), so the title bar is never resampled.
- The desktop icon can no longer go stale. The bin is modified by writing the
$R/$Ipairs directly, so the app verifies every deletion, sweeps up orphaned metadata, and empties throughSHEmptyRecycleBin— the only way Explorer's desktop icon follows along.
flowchart LR
USER(["Double-click<br/>the Recycle Bin"])
subgraph APP["Modern Recycle Bin"]
HOST["WinForms host window<br/><i>owns the taskbar icon</i>"]
WEB["WebView2<br/><i>HTML / CSS / JS interface</i>"]
CORE["C# core<br/><i>enumerate · restore · purge</i>"]
end
subgraph SHELL["Windows Shell"]
NS["Recycle Bin namespace"]
BIN["$Recycle.Bin<br/>$R payload · $I metadata"]
end
USER --> HOST
HOST --> WEB
WEB <-->|"postMessage (JSON)"| CORE
CORE <-->|"Shell.Application"| NS
CORE <-->|"read / write pairs"| BIN
CORE -->|"SHEmptyRecycleBin"| NS
CORE -->|"SHChangeNotify"| NS
Where each part lives
| File | Role |
|---|---|
src/RbWeb.cs |
The host: window, WebView2 setup, shell access, all file operations |
src/ui/index.html |
The whole interface — layout, styling and interaction |
installer/Setup.cs |
The single-file installer and uninstaller |
lib/ |
Microsoft's official WebView2 SDK (net462 build + x64 native loader) |
Why the UI is HTML. Getting a genuinely Windows 11 look out of classic WinForms controls means owner-drawing every pixel — and even then the list selection is a fixed system blue that cannot be restyled. HTML and CSS give the real thing: correct type sizes, sub-pixel text rendering, rounded surfaces and Fluent motion.
Why the host is our own window. Hosting the same UI in a browser would hand the taskbar a browser icon. Because the WebView lives inside a WinForms window belonging to this application, the taskbar and Alt-Tab show the Recycle Bin icon.
Why the file operations are native C#. Reading $Recycle.Bin directly means
the app knows exactly what it is doing: it parses the $I metadata for the
original path and deletion time, pairs it with the $R payload, and verifies
every move. It never shells out to a verb that might block on an invisible
dialog.
You need nothing but the .NET Framework compiler that ships with Windows.
git clone https://github.com/Dannyzzy/Modern-Recycle-Bin.git
cd Modern-Recycle-Bin
build.cmdThe script compiles src/RbWeb.cs, assembles the portable build, and produces all
three release artefacts in dist/:
dist\RecycleBin.exe portable application
dist\ModernRecycleBinSetup.exe single-file installer
dist\ModernRecycleBin-portable.zip portable zip
A GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/build.yml) runs the same script on
every push.
The window is blank, or says WebView2 is missing
The app renders its interface with the WebView2 Runtime. Windows 11 and current Windows 10 include it. If it is absent, install Microsoft's official Evergreen Bootstrapper and run the app again: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=2124703
Windows SmartScreen warns me about the installer
The release binaries are not code-signed (a signing certificate costs money for
an open-source project). Choose More info → Run anyway. You can also build
the binaries yourself with build.cmd and use those.
Does this delete anything by itself?
No. The app never touches anything outside the Recycle Bin, and it never empties or deletes without a confirmation dialog. Restoring moves files back to their original location; deleting removes them permanently, exactly as the system Recycle Bin would.
How do I get the default Recycle Bin back?
Run Uninstall.cmd in the install folder. It removes the per-user registry
redirect, deletes the desktop shortcut, and deletes the program folder. The
desktop Recycle Bin immediately behaves as it originally did.
Why can't I cut a file?
Inside $Recycle.Bin a file is stored under an internal $R… name. A home-made
cut would put that internal name on the clipboard and paste it under the wrong
name. Explorer can do it because the shell handles the copy itself — so this app
deliberately offers restore and copy-out instead.
- No "Cut". See the explanation above.
- Items the current user cannot read (for example another account's bin) are skipped, and the app reports them rather than failing silently.
- Videos are not previewed. Only images get a thumbnail, by design.
- The interface is currently Simplified Chinese; English strings are on the way.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. If you have found a bug, please include your Windows version, the steps to reproduce it, and — when relevant — what the Recycle Bin contained at the time.
Released under the MIT License.
Bundled third-party components and their licenses are listed in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. No files from Windows, Explorer or any third-party application are redistributed; the Recycle Bin icon is read from the system at runtime.
Files Companion — brings the
startup animation back to the Files
file manager and routes folders, drives, "This PC" and Win+E through it. Its
installer can set up this Recycle Bin for you in the same pass, so the two work
as one set.