NaiveBayesian14 minutes ago
I love nextcloud and have been using it for years. However recently I've considered taking my instance offline or at least behind a VPN because even if only 10% is true of what AI folks are claiming about LLMs finding exploits left and right, it seems super risky to be hosting your private data on nextcloud.
How do you folks deal with these massively increased threats to self-hosted open source apps?
blendergeek3 hours ago
Nextcloud has the most confusing versioning of any software I have ever used.
Nextcloud Hub 26 is Nextcloud 34 and follows Nextcloud Hub 9 which is Nextcloud 33.
And I could be off on those exact numbers.
Schlagbohreran hour ago
NextCloud Notes is frustratingly broken for offline use. The UI bricks itself with its own error messages when it can't phone home to the server. Even notes which are marked in the app as "Make available offline" don't work offline!
The iOS applications also are quite poor. For example the home screen widget has never shown me any of my favorited items even though it should, I have many favorited items, it is fully synced when I'm on my home network, yet it says "no favorites".
Considering the size of NextCloud and how long they've been around I wish they would fully complete more of their offerings before launching a dozen new ones.
drnick12 hours ago
Nextcloud is great, I self-host an instance at home. I mostly use the calendar, address book, and file sharing with links a la Google Drive. It's probably heavier and slower than it should be for what it does, but it works.
Just like Home Assistant, it is a "must have" tool for self-hosters.
lgcmo12 minutes ago
What's your experience like?
Lot's of people say that's a mess to maintain and too broken to actively use.
I often doubt if that's due to actual problems, or mix with that and bad decisions on the setup. Is dockering, keeping the data handling itself outside of it and a few other easy (or not so much) precautions enough to have a somewhat smoother sailing?
Also, how much time do you need to keep things from failing apart?
troyvitan hour ago
This is a niche use, but I use the PhoneTrack app[1] with Nextcloud. It allows me to track my phone without relying on a third party service. It saved my ass already when I lost my phone in the park one night, and it's a nice way to track long hiking trips or road trips too as it saves the gpx and lets you export it:
ntnsndr3 hours ago
I now use Nextcloud both for a family server and an academic lab. It has become such a daily part of my life, and I am really grateful for it. I just wish the network effects were stronger so I could benefit more from the federated features, and people didn't think it is so weird to get a Nextcloud link.
Lab use: https://git.medlab.host/MEDLab/Handbook/src/branch/main/docs...
Personal use: https://nathanschneider.info/2026/06/toward-a-durable-writin...
imalerbaan hour ago
I left nextcloud because how slow it felt even on my beefy server. I switched to opencloud.eu, it might have less features but it's just what I needed
vitally3643an hour ago
Seriously. I ran it on a server with two Xeon CPUs and 128GB of RAM. The web interface took minutes to do anything. Browsing a large photo library was just completely unworkable (and that was before they ripped out all the sorting and filtering features from the photo library).
My instance killed itself somehow, likely a failed auto update. I was, of course, using the default docker setup with the watchtower instance etc etc. I never got it to come back up, and I haven't missed it at all.
Even opening the damn login page took a good 30 seconds to load, there's no excuse for this kind of performance on a real-deal enterprise server.
c0balt22 minutes ago
NextCloud needs tuning (mostly of php-fpm and caching ) oob to be fast/usable in my experience. Just throwing resources at it won't make it faster as the defaults are generally quite conservative.
They even have a specific guide for this topic, https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/instal...
As a side note, it's PHP so your single core clocks will generally be more relevant for latency than multi-core performance, feeding many cores requires a lot of divisble work.
ezst3 hours ago
Upgraded yesterday, I only use a small amount of features (files, memories, calendar, tasks). It sucks that tasks isn't compatible yet (but I mostly use DAVx⁵/Tasks.org as front-end), and it sucks that the landing page still pulls close to 20MB or so, but besides that, nothing to report one way or another.
fundatus2 hours ago
I love Nextcloud but I feel like they should really completely redo their UI. It just doesn't look like something from this decade.
emilbratt2 hours ago
Wait, you don't feel so?
I have maintained a Nextcloud server for a small business for the last 6 years. I agree when I started using it early 2020 that the ui felt less modern, but after some updates down the road up until now it looks completely like it is from this era. Am I missing something? However, I never complained about the UI neither then nor now.
hkpackan hour ago
NextCloud's macOS app is implemented in a way that completely disregards any UI guidelines or just common sense for the platform.
Developers either don't use macOS at all, or don't care.
But functionally it works for our small team.
c0balt19 minutes ago
NextCloud generally appears to use their own design system everywhere, Android apps are also not in Material or on iOS (iirc) in Cupertino. It makes for a subpar experience in general but is consistent.
bigstrat20032 hours ago
That is not a compelling reason to overhaul a UI (which is something that should rarely, if ever, be done). If it works and is pleasant to use, what it looks like is of no consequence.
artgship2 hours ago
Been using Nextcloud exclusively for probably 4 years now? Before that it was a mix of nextcloud + Google Drive. It works for me really well, I can grab my files through my vpn with any of my computers when I am not at home.
tapoxi2 hours ago
If I want to buy a small NAS that just runs Nextcloud and has a copy of my Google Photos library - what do I go with?
I don't have a ton of space so something that fits in the media center.
jmathai2 hours ago
If you’re going to run your own NAS then consider swapping Google Photos out with Immich.
I know it’s not the question you asked but I feel not enough people know about it as an option and it’s really as good as Google Photos.
bayindirh2 hours ago
GMKTec G9. Four NVMe slots, plus some internal memory to deploy TrueNAS. It only has 12GB of RAM, but has two ethernet cards, acceptable cooling and performance and has a small footprint.
SSDs shall be single sided and gonna need heatsinks, but I believe it works well and is not tied to any manufacturer for anything.
If you want go all-out get ASUSTOR's Ryzen based systems. You can use the stock firmware or disable it without wiping it and deploy TrueNAS on it. It's a beast.
TrueNAS has containers and applications and VM support so you can run any service you want on it.
shadowphoan hour ago
I have a g9 and cooling is fine, but not great. I ended up opening it up and placing heatsinks on hot chips
TiredOfLife2 hours ago
Google photos will become one way sync only in august. You can upload to cloud, but no sync to pc.
geff822 hours ago
How is OpenCloud a serious competitor?
beepbooptheory3 hours ago
Maybe I'm alone but nextcloud has gone from being kinda flaky and annoying to really great the past few years.
technothrasher3 hours ago
I don't think I really push it, but I find it just right for self-hosting my calendar, contacts, photos, and files.
wolttam3 hours ago
I'd agree that it has gotten better over time. I'm glad we have Nextcloud around.
theodric3 hours ago
I always had terrible trouble keeping it (and before it, Owncloud) updated and in sync with available dependencies on my Debian host. A few years ago, when I built a new NAS, I installed a snap, and that's been the ticket. It's pretty close to flawless now.
bigstrat20032 hours ago
I'm not a huge "run everything in a container" guy, but Nextcloud is one of those things I absolutely will always run in a container. It's too much of a beast for me to have any desire to try to manage package versions and fixing it if something breaks.
encom2 hours ago
When I ran OwnCloud (on Debian), I installed from their APT repo, and one "apt upgrade" handled everything. It was nice and easy, and I didn't have any problems with it.
NextCloud uses its own updater* (which I don't like), and aside from some recent MariaDB snafu it's been very low maintenance.
(*)sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/updater/updater.pharlvales2 hours ago
Yeah, I eventually gave up on self hosting Nextcloud because of incompatibilities with PHP(-FPM), iirc. They were always lagging behind and it became a hassle to mantain. I ended up replacing all the parts I used with other single purpose software, and it's been a better experience overall.
krs_an hour ago
Arch Linux added php-legacy and php-fpm-legacy, which tracks (I think) the oldest supported PHP release, a couple of years ago. After I switched to that it's been pretty smooth sailing.
jaffa23 hours ago
Is nextcloud the good one and owncloud the inferior one?
__jonas11 minutes ago
The breakdown as I understand is as follows:
- Owncloud: The 'original' platform, written in php, still developed today
- Nextcloud: A fork of Owncloud (php) by some of the people that worked on it, including the project founder over directional differences, now more widely used than the original Owncloud
- Owncloud infinite scale (OCIS): An implementation of the Owncloud server in Go, with the goal of making it faster and more scalable than the PHP version
- Opencloud: A fork of Owncloud infinite scale (Go) after an acquisition of ownCloud, the company.
zamalek2 hours ago
My biggest problem with Nextcloud is that it intentionally broke (at least twice by memory) on some updates, wanting me to run some oci command on the box. Remember that "for my family" also means "for my family when I'm gone." I never got round to having to find an alternative thanks to the divorce, but I'd consider Nextcloud a complete non-starter for this reason.
Find an alternative.
FabCH3 hours ago
I don’t know about owncloud, but I have been hosting a family Nextcloud instance for a little under two years and it works fine.
It’s boring. It works.
m00dy3 hours ago
same here, great choice for a private family cloud.
maxloh2 hours ago
Nextcloud is written in PHP, which doesn't sound scalable to me.
OwnCloud is written in Go but employs an open-core model. Some features are locked behind a proprietary paywall.
cheschirean hour ago
“OwnCloud infinite scale” is written in Go. But ownCloud 10 is php.
I tried for weeks to get OCIS working but gave up and went back to ownCloud 10.
They’re committed to security updates for 10 but it’s a small company. I doubt it will get much attention sadly.
graemep2 hours ago
Shared nothing is no scaleable?
mbesto2 hours ago
> Nextcloud is written in PHP, which doesn't sound scalable to me.
Lol what? Facebook (pre Hack), Tumblr, Wordpress, Etsy...
smilesprayan hour ago
Nextcloud and Wordpress both suffer massively from technical debt.
encom2 hours ago
The good OwnCloud is abandoned, and instead they released some meme enterprise nonsense.
I'm running NextCloud, but I hesitate to call it good, because of its kitchen sink approach to features. I really want 2015 era OwnCloud with just files, it being PHP/MariaDB/Apache-based. I refuse to use anything that requires Docker, which is most of the slop alternatives currently available.
kombine2 hours ago
I run nextcloud on a NixOS server within a systemd container, so no Docker.
doubled1122 hours ago
You can remove almost app in Nextcloud. It is pretty modular. You can have a files only Nextcloud, last time I tried.
Diti2 hours ago
Am I the only one who doesn’t trust Nextcloud because they use Vimeo instead of a privacy-respecting CDN to showcase videos of their project?
redlewelan hour ago
Yes, you are the only one.
tda3 hours ago
I run Nextcloud at home with 1.5TB of files and 2 users, on a reasonably sized server. It is painfully slow. Still better than OneDrive, but only just: synscing takes forever, never reaching a fraction of available bandwidth. Upload from my phone is flaky, often hangs and needs manual intervention. It is a battery drain. The whole experience with add-ons and the general UI feels like a 2010 PHP app.
I am grateful Nextcloud exists, but no app deserves a vibe coded Rust rewrite more than Nextcloud. Literally nothing to loose
ezst12 minutes ago
Look into "next cloud HPB" (High performance backend) https://github.com/nextcloud/notify_push
chrneu2 hours ago
This seems to be a really common issue with NextCloud. I'd say about 30% of installs seems to just..be slow? I've had this happen to me on a handful of installs, and i've had friends/collegues it's happened to.
I'm not aware of any "Fix" besides whiping your install(s) and trying again. Try not to use a backup if you can, as it can keep the slowness/lag across installs.
It's really annoying.
Schlagbohreran hour ago
At that point it would be so painful it'd prompt users to switch to competing software.
The whole NextCloud suite seems to have this problem of too many offerings that don't get polished to completion.
mixmastamykan hour ago
Opencloud is the golang rewrite and is much faster.