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Tip: Unzip multiple files into a single directory in Mac OSX

Time to time you will come across multiple compressed files who's internal files need to be uncompressed into the same directory. With OSX you can run a simple terminal command and extracted all the files into the same directory without the need of a third party application. .

Example: you have these files 

HypotheticalFILE1.zip
HypotheticalFILE2.zip
HypotheticalFILE3.zip
HypotheticalFILE4.zip
HypotheticalFILE5.zip

Rather than double-clicking each *.zip file (which most of the time creates folders for each file extracted) you can run a command from the Terminal which will extract all the files in to the same directory.

Open Terminal and navigate to the directory where all the zip files are stored.

For the purpose of this articale , I might have them stored in a zip folder on my desktop.

cd “/Users/thomas/Desktop/zips” [Return]

Once your in that directory you just need to type this:

unzip \*.zip [Return]

You will then be presented (if there are any duplicate files being uncompressed with the following:

replace duplicatefile.mp4? [y]es, [n]o, [A]ll, [N]one, [r]ename:

Just type either ‘y‘, ‘n‘, ‘A‘, ‘N‘, or ‘r‘ and hit [Return]