How to delete directory on Linux

Deleting a directory (also called folder) on Linux is a common task that every user will have to perform at some time or another. This can be done via any desktop environment that you have installed, or from command line with the rm command.

While this is a pretty basic function, there are some important caveats to keep in mind. In this guide, we’ll go over several examples of deleting a directory on Linux. Feel free to follow along on your own system in order to master the rm command and GUI process.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to delete a directory via GUI
• How to delete a directory via command line

How to delete a directory on Linux

How to delete a directory via GUI

The process for deleting a directory on Linux, through the graphical interface, is going to vary a little depending on your distribution and desktop environment that you have installed. But the only real difference you’ll see is that some of the menus look a little different.

Once you know how to delete directories on one GUI, you’ll have mastered them all. In the steps below, we’re using the GNOME desktop environment, which is the default for many popular distributions like Ubuntu.

1. Right click on the directory you wish to remove, and click “move to trash.” On some desktop environments, the option may simply be called “delete” or something similar. Alternatively, you can highlight the folder and click Delete on your keyboard.


Send the directory to the trash bin

2. The directory has not yet been permanently deleted, but has rather been moved to the trash bin. If we change our mind about deleting the folder, we can recover it from the bin. To permanently delete the directory, along with any other contents you may have moved to the trash bin, right click on the trash bin icon and press “empty trash.”


Empty the trash bin to delete all its contents

That’s all there is to it. Note that this will delete the folder, and all of its contents, including subdirectories. Next, we’ll cover the command line method.

How to delete a directory via command line

The rm command (short for “remove”) is used to delete directories (and files, too) on Linux. The most basic form of the command is to simply specify the location of a directory, along with the -d option in your command. You can either use the absolute path or relative path to the directory.

$ rm -d /path/to/directory

The above example will only delete the directory if it’s completely empty. That’s what the -d option allows us to do. Without the option, we’ll just get an error that rm can’t remove directories.

$ rm example
rm: cannot remove 'example': Is a directory

If the directory isn’t empty, then the -d option isn’t going to work either.

$ rm -d example
rm: cannot remove 'example': Directory not empty

To make rm delete the directory, as well as its content (files, subdirectories, etc), we can use the -r (recursive) option.

$ rm -r example

You may notice how we don’t get much room for error, like we do with the GUI method. There is no trash bin for the command line. To make things a little less risky, we could also use the -i (interactive) option, which will ask us for verification before deleting. You’ll have to enter yes in order to proceed with the deletion.

$ rm -ri example
rm: descend into directory 'example'? yes
rm: remove regular empty file 'example/test.txt'? yes
rm: remove directory 'example'? yes

Use the -v (verbose) option if you’d like details about what the rm command is doing.

$ rm -rv example
removed 'example/test.txt'
removed directory 'example'

If you have a pesky directory that isn’t deleting easily, or continually prompting you for confirmation, you can use the -f (force) option to forcefully delete it. Be careful with this one, as it suppresses warnings and will basically delete anything you tell it to, even if doing so is harmful to the system.

$ rm -rf example

You can also remove multiple directories at once. In this example, we delete three different directories in a single command.

$ rm -r dir1 dir2 dir3

Closing Thoughts

In this guide, we saw how to delete directories on a Linux system through GUI and command line. This is a common task that all users should master. As usual, the command line method offers us a bit more control over the process, but both methods are equally viable. Use whichever one is more convenient for you.