Tech I Use: Nextcloud

I first tried owncloud years ago, back when it was still a bit unstable and upgrading was difficult and complex, and for a long time I just used Google Drive and didn’t think much about privacy nor security. However, as I set my sights on those things again, a new option has come into play nextcloud.

A fork of owncloud, which is still around too, nextcloud has grown a lot. I started searching initially for a way to back up my contacts and calendar, in my effort to get away from gmail, and came across it, and saw that nextcloud offers a lot more than just syncing and backing up files.

It has apps which can be installed on top of the base file backup, which can do a lot of things. Beyond the calendar and contacts which I initially looked for, the note taking app I used to compose this content, but also versioning files, deleting to a recycling bin to support un-deleting.

There are apps for logging phone location, chat and video call capabilities, just about any aspect of Google’s ecosystem has a replacement under next cloud waiting for you.

Still, basically just a php website, so pretty easy to set up, and maintain. It can easily be set to email you when there are updates, and can be fairly hands off.