I recently had someone ask me how you could remove the Recycle Bin from a modern SharePoint team site’s left-hand navigation menu. Even if you click Edit on the navigation menu, Recycle Bin disappears as an option you can change. So how can it be done?
While it’s not the most straightforward process, it is possible to remove Recycle bin from a site’s navigation menu but it will require activating the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure site collection feature.
Before you proceed, please read about this feature and its impacts in its entirety and check out Gregory Zelfond’s excellent write-up on the advantages and disadvantages here.
If you’d still like to proceed, and you’re the site’s owner, follow these steps to remove Recycle bin from your menu (video at bottom).
- Go to the site for which you wish to remove Recycle bin’s link
- Go to Site contents > Site settings
- Select Site collection features from the Site Collection Administration section
- Activate the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature (this may take a minute or two)
Your Recycle bin has now been removed from your navigation menu, but you can still access it via Site contents > Recycle bin.
