TL;DR: Ditched Nextcloud because of sync issues / perceived bloat previously. Installed it again and am really impressed with the apps I never used before, like Calender, Tasks, and News.

Some years ago, I used to use Nextcloud on my fileserver. I was only really using it for two features: the web file browser (obviously), and file syncing with my laptop/phone using the Nextcloud client. The thing that has always irked me is that Nextcloud did not seem to be designed with using existing data (which is also accessed via other means than Nextcloud) in mind: I use my NAS/fileserver for storage of most of my data and as it is in my LAN, I mostly access it directly over SMB/NFS. I managed to overcome this limitation initially using a symlink in the Nextcloud data directory and later using External Storage (also over SMB), IIRC.

I decided to ditch Nextcloud eventually though because I grew increasingly fed up with syncing problems (file changes on the server often would not get picked up by Nextcloud, probably because I used External Storage over SMB). I also felt it was very bloated/overkill for what I was using it for: it is this multi-tenant system designed for building a cloud with all these features like encryption, versioning, etc that did not fit in with my usecase because my data does not reside ‘in’ Nextcloud. I replaced it with SyncThing for file syncing, and with FileBrowser for the web access. SyncThing works well, but is a bit harder to setup and less fancy.

Now, last weekend I installed Nextcloud again because I lacked a solution for two features: auto-upload of pictures on my phone (I never got this working with SyncThing), and a Thunderbird Filelink provider. I saw that Nextcloud had become a lot more modular than since I last used it, and that it gained a lot more of these optional features (Apps). This time, I checked out some of these, like Tasks. It really positively surprised me! I had been looking for this “ideal tasks app” for quite some time, and none of those I’ve tried (Nirvana for GTD, Google Tasks + gtasksd + Tasks (Android)) fulfilled all my requirements. But this Tasks app in Nextcloud is pretty much perfect! It supports all my required features and I can use it on mobile (Android) using DAVx5 and Tasks.

I also saw that News can replace my FreshRSS instance, Mail can replace my Roundcube instance, and I’m also considering migrating from Google Calender to Nextcloud Calender.

I don’t know whether I will also move back to Nextcloud again for file sync; I think I’ll stick with SyncThing for the time being, because it works well. I also still have no use for the multi-tenancy, but I’m glad that I gave Nextcloud a chance again because I’m really liking the new apps, and I don’t mind the bloat as much because it’s not bloat if you’re using it ;)