Unzip All Files In Subfolders Linux

The following methods utilize the find command, the standard utility for searching for files in a directory hierarchy.

What if some of those ZIP files themselves contain other ZIP files? The command above only extracts one level. To recursively extract until no ZIPs remain, use a loop:

while find . -name "*.zip" -type f | grep -q .; do
    find . -name "*.zip" -type f -exec unzip -o {} -d {}/.. \;
    find . -name "*.zip" -type f -delete   # optional: remove original zip after extraction
done

This repeats until every nested ZIP is fully expanded. Remove the -delete line if you want to keep the original archives.

The standard unzip command does not natively support recursive directory traversal. Running unzip *.zip in a parent directory will only extract archives located immediately within that directory, ignoring any archives nested in subfolders. Furthermore, standard shell globbing (*) is generally not recursive by default in most POSIX-compliant shells.