A new feature has been discovered in the all-new SkyDrive refresh that launched last week, and it's something that could come in handy. LiveSide went code diving through the new design, and discovered a string called "recycleBinEnabled" so when they flipped the 0 to a 1, the recycle bin feature magically appeared.

Here's a screenshot captured by the site showing the Recycle Bin feature in the SkyDrive sidebar.


So what does it do? Unfortunately the feature isn't operational right now, but we can figure out what it does by simply following logic. Traditionally in Windows, whenever you delete a file it's never fully deleted. It's placed in file deletion purgatory, also known as a Recycle Bin. This is done as sort of a fail safe to make sure a user hasn't deleted a file by accident, and requires them to empty the recycle bin to confirm that those files should be deleted permanently. So we can expect the same functionality here: deleting a file in your SkyDrive won't actually be deleted until you clear it from the Recycle Bin. LiveSide also reported a rumor back in May that said as much.

It's very clever and could be a life (or job) saver, especially as SkyDrive permeates deeper into the Windows 7 and 8 interfaces with its apps. Now we're wondering when we'll see such functionality go online, and if we'll get a Recycle Bin in our favorite mobile client too. Let's also hope that if Microsoft feels the need to delete anything it considers naughty, they'll at least place it in the Recycle Bin first.

Source: LiveSide