Why I Think Nextcloud Is Shit

14 Dec 2024 | ~4 minute read

I've tried Nextcloud a few times over the years, but every time I do, I end up coming away thinking it's shit. Here's why...

Before we get started here, I want to stress that this is just my opinion, if it works for you and you're happy with their offering, that's great. I still think it's shit though.

Ok, with that out of the way, let's get into it. After recently moving from iOS to Android, I was on the hunt for a new Notes app, as I used iOS notes before.

After trying a few different options that didn't quite work, I decided to throw a Nextcloud instance on my server and give their Notes app a try.

Big mistake.

After an hour of pissing around, and receiving multiple poorly worded error messages, I once again confirmed that Nextcloud is shit and decided to move on with my life.

I've since found a notes solution that works really well, so I'm not looking for recommendations here.

First impressions

So after spinning up my shiny new Nextcloud instance, I went through the welcome wizard, installed some of their recommended apps, and started to click around. One of the apps it recommended was Nextcloud Office. This looked pretty cool from the screenshots, so I immediately went to load up a DOCX file to see what it was all about.

But when I attempted to open the DOCX file, instead of seeing a web based document editor, I was greeted with this screen:

There was no option that I could see to configure Nextcloud Office, so I took to the internet to see what was going on. After a quick search I found a thread that said it's because the Collabora app is required.

Nextcloud didn't tell me this, which is pretty shitty considering it's a requirement for Office to work. Anyway, off I went to install the Collabora package in Nextcloud:

At this point I decided this particular rabbit hole wasn't worth exploring further as such a generic error message is useless.

Not wanting to waste space on my server, I decided to disable the Office package, then remove it. Problem was, whenever I tried to remove any app, the Remove button just did nothing.

On to Notes

Ok, that was a waste of time, so I decided cut my losses and turn my attention to the Nextcloud Notes app instead.

I created a test note within the Nextcloud web app, and it seemed ok. The UI needed some work - it was pretty ugly - but I can live with that. Off I went to my Pixel 8 to install the Nextcloud Notes app and get my sync on.

I open up the app, hit the "Choose Account" button to, presumably, login to my instance. And I was greeted with yet another error message:

So in order to sync notes with Nextcloud, I need to install 2 apps? What the actual fuck?! I don't want to sync any files from Nextcloud to my phone, so I shouldn't need the Files app.

Anyway, I wanted to try the Notes app, so I yielded and installed the Files app too, only to find that Notes wouldn't sync properly.

It's like the Notes app got confused with the order of changes to my notes, which would result in duplicated blank notes, or existing notes missing information. This was the case with 3 test notes, so goodness knows what it would have been like had I migrated all my notes.

Final thoughts

By this point I'd wasted around an hour and I figured if I'd hit this many problems in such a short span of time, there's absolutely no way that Nextcloud was going to be a usable tool in the long term.

I posted about this on Mastodon at the time, and (unsurprisingly) I got some hate in the comments, but I also had a number of "me too" kinda responses. So it's definitely not just me being a Muppet.

How does Nextcloud have so many users if it's do damned buggy (and shit)? Anyway, my instance has been deleted from my server and I don't think I'll be trying it again any time soon.

I think Nextcloud tries to do too much - there seems to be an app for everything in their ecosystem and the result is that they're shit at everything, instead of being really good at a few things.

Sorry Nextcloud, but it's you, not me. You're just too shit.

• Opinion
• Web

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