Permanently deleting photos in LrC, or: "to prompt or not to prompt? That is my question"

[LiquidFractal]

I can't figure this particular thing out about Lrc:

One of the reasons why I previously asked about permanently deleting photos in Lrc is because sometimes, when I press DELETE with a picture selected, I get a popup window which asks me if I want to Delete From Disk, only Delete From Lightroom, or Cancel.

I like this window...except that I don't always get it when I press DELETE (or BACKSPACE, as I read in another thread).  For no apparent reason, the next time I hit DELETE it simply deleted the photo from LrC but not from my hard drive.  This is why I asked about permanently deleting photos, and while the answers were all Mac and not PC (so it took a bit to figure out the keys), I eventually got to the CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+DELETE hotkey.

This said, can someone explain the quirky behaviour of this window to me?  I did literally nothing to change configuration or settings - pressing DELETE for one photo brought up the window, pressing DELETE on the next photo did not.

[DdeGannes]

Go to Lightroom Classic Preferences > General tab, towards the bottom there should be an option to Reset all warning Dialogs click on the option.

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

The behavior differs depending on where you are and what the image is. If you have selected a folder or the 'All Photographs' collection, then you will (should) get that dialog when you hit the delete key. Unless the image you selected is a virtual copy, in which case the copy is deleted but the original is not, so no question about deleting from disk is warranted. If you are in a collection however, then hitting the Delete key will remove the image from that collection only. It will not be removed from the catalog and consequently again no question about deleting from disk is warranted.

[LiquidFractal]

Ahh, ok, yes, this makes sense.  Thanks to everyone for their helpful information!