The MacOS Catalina is pretty new and pretty neat and with every upgrades, there is always something missing, added or relocated an example of this would be the odd folder on the Desktop which is called the “Relocated Items”; but what is this folder all about and why is it exactly on the homescreen?

The moment you smash the “Upgrade” button, lots of processes began right under the hood. With changes such as a loss of support for 32-But applications, Kernel extensions no longer in the picture, and also the APFS is now fully baked with your Mac’s SSD split into two partitions; one for data, the other for Catalina, there is been lots of changes that might be a bit strange to you.

So with so much data being repositioned while others get ousted from the system, now because MacOS has to make tons of decisions as fast as it possibly could, the roadblocks then appears with files that might not have a proper place on the new system or data partitions.

Even some of this files might be stranded application files which are no longer supported which means they dumped at the Relocated Items.

It’s important to note that what you’re seeing on your Desktop isn’t actually the folder in question. It’s a link to the real location at /Users/Shared/Relocated Items. If you want to remove that shortcut, just drag it to the Trash and you’re done.

Disabling System Integrity Protection will give you the necessary rights to be able to delete these files when they’re been moved into the Trash Can because deleting the files will take you some stress due to permissions which might not even allow you to easily empty your trash.

SIP is there to protect your system and we’d normally never suggest disabling it. But if you’re sure this is what you want to do, here’s how to do it.

1. Restart your Mac, and press and hold Command and R to enter Recovery mode.
2. From the menu bar, head to Utilities > Terminal.
3. In the Terminal, enter the following command, followed by hitting the Return key: csrutil disable
4. Now restart your Mac once again, and then delete the files once more. Empty the trash, too. Everything should work fine.

If all goes well, then the Relocated Items folder should be completely out of your computer memory. But make sure that you evaluate this folder to ensure there is nothing really important in the folder just so you don’t delete an important file forever.

And when all is done and dusted, you might want to turn the SIP back on to continue the security of your system. To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Repeat Step 1 and Step 2 above, and with the Terminal running, enter the following command followed by hitting the Return key: csrutil enable
2. Once again, restart your Mac and SIP will be enabled.