[Pending] Emptying Trash or Permanently Delete Draft in Action / Script

Actions - Help & Questions
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#1

Hi,

I’m creating some actions to write notes that might include some sensitive information. I have an action that moves the notes out of Drafts and then deletes it (using the action “After Success” -> Ask option). That solves part of the problem, but now these sensitive drafts are in the Trash.

I’m looking for a solution to either (1) empty the Trash or (2) delete the specific draft permanently and that can additionally work in actions in both iOS and macOS.

Although I haven’t tried it yet, I think in macOS I’ll be able to add a little AppleScript to select “Empty Trash” from the menu, but a more elegant solution would be welcome. In iOS, I don’t think there’s a solution and I’ll need to remember to empty the Trash after the action.

I suspect this doesn’t exist to keep people from accidentally hosing their trash bins, but I don’t mind a solution that asks for confirmation every time (e.g. a nice solution would the “Ask” after success option to include “Permanently Delete”).

Any ideas? Thanks.

1 Like
#2

I am interested to find out if this is possible. I have a couple of actions where I really do not need the draft once it is processed and having to empty the trash from time to time is an extra step I would love to avoid.

#3

I assume Greg could add something to allow a more immediate permanent deletion via a script action or URL scheme option, but there’s a certain element of danger there for sharing such actions and unintended consequences.

Have you also taken into account Drafts’ backups for such highly confidential data? That would be a accessible as the trashed draft.

I’ll assume the security for iCloud sync is okay for your existing requirements.

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#4

Any progress on this? I’d like an action that would delete a single draft while bypassing the trash. Alternatively, move it to the trash then delete it. I agree with @eruizdechavez that I don’t want to empty the entire trash every time I want to securely delete one draft.

This might be a possibility for @sylumer 's TAD actions.

Thanks.

#5

Sorry. This is not currently possible. Being “trashed” is an attribute status of a draft. To delete a draft you have to make it not exist in the app. There’s no access to do that via scripting, and nothing in the URL scheme.

In the app, it is even manually a two-step process. Only a draft that has been put in the trash can be deleted.

To do this in one step, it would need Greg to add something into Drafts and make it available to us to use.

But I would still say, as above, that backups would still be an issue to consider if something needs deleting that much. If you were dealing with something transient and highly confidential that you were sharing to another app, which was in turn kept no record once processed, or had additional significant access prevention measures.

Drafts will empty the trash automatically, so it also is not a case of Drafts persisting indefinitely in the trash.

#6

I’d certainly appreciate a feature like this. Not from a security/privacy perspective but purely convenience for notes that are so temporary it’s not worth them going in to the trash.

Guess it’s more of an OCD thing than anything else. :laughing:

#7

Adding a bump to this as well. I’d like to permanently delete something after an action is successfully run.

#8

Did you have a use case in mind where the backup and automatic purging would not affect the efficacy or cover this?