Trash

sanity-plugin-trash

A Trash for Sanity Studio: browse documents that were deleted from your dataset and restore them as drafts, for any schema type, with zero configuration.

Sanity has no built-in trash or recycle bin. When a document is deleted it disappears from every list, and recovering it means scripting against the History API. This plugin turns that into a Studio tool: a navbar Trash view that reconstructs deletions from the dataset's transaction log, so it even works retroactively for documents deleted before the plugin was installed.

Features

• Works with every schema type automatically. Deletions are discovered from the transaction log, not per-type configuration. Filter tabs are built from whatever was actually deleted.
• Restore as draft. Restoring recreates the document as a draft with its original ID, so references reconnect when published. Nothing goes back on your live site until an editor reviews and publishes it. When a deleted document had a draft with newer work than its published version, that newer content is what gets restored.
• Human-readable previews. A details dialog renders the deleted document's content using your schema's field titles, with rich-text excerpts, image thumbnails, and resolved reference titles. References whose targets are also deleted get flagged, with a warning that publishing will fail until they're restored too. Raw JSON is available behind an "Advanced" toggle.
• Search and filters. Search by title, slug, type, or ID; filter by document type; pick a scan window (24 hours to 90 days).
• Delete permanently. Multi-select with select-all, guarded by a confirmation dialog. Purged entries disappear from the Trash for all Studio users (state is stored in a hidden trash.purged document in the dataset).
• Permission-aware. Restore and Delete permanently are disabled (with an explanatory tooltip) for users whose role can't perform them, using the Studio's own grants system.
• Retention display. The tool shows how far back your dataset's transaction history reaches, so an empty trash is never falsely reassuring.
• Noise-free. Publishes, draft discards, and unpublishes are correctly excluded: a document only appears in the Trash when neither its published version nor its draft exists.

Installation

npm install sanity-plugin-trash

Usage

Add it as a plugin in sanity.config.ts (or .js):

import {defineConfig} from 'sanity'
import {trashTool} from 'sanity-plugin-trash'

export default defineConfig({
  // ...
  plugins: [trashTool()],
})

Options

trashTool({
  /** Initial scan window in days (default 30) */
  defaultWindowDays: 7,
})

Moving the tool to the end of the navbar

The plugin doesn't force a navbar position. To place Trash last (after core tools like Releases), reorder in your config:

export default defineConfig({
  // ...
  tools: (prev) => {
    const trash = prev.find((tool) => tool.name === 'trash')
    return trash ? [...prev.filter((tool) => tool !== trash), trash] : prev
  },
})

How it works

Sanity deletion is real: there is no soft delete. This plugin reconstructs a virtual trash from the dataset's transaction log.

• Deletions are found by scanning transactions and checking which touched documents no longer exist (in either published or draft form).
• Restore fetches the document's last pre-deletion revision from the History API and recreates it as a draft via createIfNotExists. An existing document is never overwritten.
• Retention applies. Transaction history is only kept for your plan's retention window (shown at the bottom of the tool). Documents deleted before that window are unrecoverable, so keep dataset export backups for anything older.
• "Delete permanently" hides, it cannot scrub. Sanity's transaction history is immutable. Purging removes entries from the Trash UI for all users (recorded in a hidden trash.purged document, keyed by deletion so a future re-deletion of a recreated document still shows up), but raw revisions remain readable via the History API until retention expires. The confirmation dialog says exactly this.
• Deletions made outside the Studio (CLI, API scripts) are found too. The transaction log sees everything.

Programmatic API

The underlying data layer is exported for scripts (e.g. sanity exec recovery tooling):

import {
  findDeletedDocuments, // scan and classify deletions since a timestamp
  loadRevision,         // fetch a deleted doc's last pre-deletion revision
  restoreDeleted,       // recreate as draft with original id
  restoreTarget,        // the exact draft a restore would create
  getHistoryHorizon,    // oldest retained transaction timestamp
  getPurged,            // entries hidden via "delete permanently"
  purgeFromTrash,       // hide entries from the Trash for all users
} from 'sanity-plugin-trash'

License

MIT © Yasin Genc

Develop & test

This plugin uses @sanity/plugin-kit with default configuration for build & watch scripts.

See Testing a plugin in Sanity Studio on how to run this plugin with hotreload in the studio.