About to give up on Nextcloud. iOS client broken AGAIN

ℹ️ Support
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1

After slightly over two years I’m about to give up on Nextcloud. I won’t even get into the drama of server updates that break the server almost every single time. I got around that by… not upgrading the server. I do a new clean install once a year. It’s easier, simpler and less frustrating this way. I can get a working instance under 30 minutes while troubleshooting broken update can take days and I ended up reinstalling at least once anyway.

And this is a simple, straightforward, barebones, single user instance with no extra apps, just for file synchronization!

Same situation with the Windows client: no updates until I reinstall the server as the updates also break the Windows desktop client too often.

Now… the iOS client is just as bad. An update couple of months ago caused it to stop synchronizing photos. I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I think there was another patch that followed that made it re-sync and duplicate thousands of photos. I had to restore the folder from backup.

Ever since then, the iOS client no longer uploads new photos in the background. I have it always opened and background app refresh is enabled, but in order to upload new photos I have to bring it to the front and pull down several times to refresh and it starts uploading. It often fails though and I need to restart the client and refresh again and again.

I learned to live with it.

Now… again. There was an update few days ago and the iOS client IS BROKEN AGAIN!!! Completely broken. It just will not sync. I’ve quit all apps, restarted the iPhone. This is useless. This is outright grotesque. I had to email these screenshots to myself.

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I’m on WiFi, the server is on the same physical subnet, it’s accessible, I can browse the folders on the server.

I try to skip iOS updates too but it’s not easy on iOS.

I understand that “there is no concept of customer satisfaction” in the FOSS world, and the privacy of hosting your own server is nice but this is getting ridiculous. How good is “free” if it’s constantly broken? Why isn’t free software tested? What’s the point of wasting your time and effort on developing something that never works properly?

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So the iOS client shows /Photo Uploads/2025/08/ but this dir does not exist on the server. Permissions on the Nextcloud data dir are correct, but I re-ran chown and chmod just in case, and restarted the iOS client but it made no difference.

I rebooted the server. Nada.

So I created 08 dir by hand and now the client syncs. What the… :enraged_face:

3

Same on me. I am an it-profession and sitting all the day in front of a monitor and support medical applications in big hospital.
And thats enough to me.
The nexcloud instance runs on a TrueNAS which is rock solid since many years.
In history i have had that same trouble up to the point i stopped this madness.
But since the update to 13.7.1 it isnt possible to connect to a server with a self signed certificate.
I roled back the windows clients and stopped updating.
The client on iOS cannot rolled back as easy and espacially it seams not be possible to protect again a reupdate.

So, as i now have to reinstall the cloud server anyway, i will quit nextcloud.
Maybe going back to ownCloud, maybe to something else. Or i use the native WebDAV implementation of TrueNAS.

Over and out

Jochen

4

I gave up on running my own Nextcloud server after nearly three years, it’s just too frustrating. For now, I started using Hetzner’s Nextcloud service last month and I am not updating the Windows and iOS clients unless they break.

I’ve had enough. If Hetzner’s Nextcloud doesn’t work out I’ll go back to Dropbox or OneDrive.

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5

@AdamAnon It might help if you could share some logs; both iOS and Nextcloud provide logs that explain why certain operations fail.
In this case, the iOS client attempts to create the subdirectory, and if it fails (check the server side), it cannot proceed.

N.B. Keeping your app up to date is the only right choice.

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6

I don’t have the server any more. And the problems started when I updated the iOS app, so I disagree. As long as the app is compatible with the server and works I’m not touching it.

Same with the Windows client: as long as it’s compatible with the server, I’m not upgrading it. Problems always start after a client update.

Always updating is not always the right strategy.

And upgrading the server was a nightmare too as I said in the OP. It’s just been a very frustrating experience overall and I know I’m not the only one affected by the Nextcloud updates issues.

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I see a lot of text here describing a problem that really could have been explained in two sentences, and even more text expressing your frustration. And yes, I can understand that to some extent, but unfortunately, that’s not really productive.

If instead of writing out your story of suffering you had filled out the support template and provided logs, someone might actually have been able to help you. I mean, you didn’t even mention what version of the client caused the issue.

Could have been this issue, which apparently has already been fixed: https://github.com/nextcloud/ios/issues/3655

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Indeed, or even one sentence:

“Lack of software update testing before release.”

At this point I gave up. I tried getting help in the past with no results. It was a waste of time.

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Of course, that’s all in the eye of the beholder. :wink:

But yes, hosting things yourself definitely requires a certain amount of effort, and Nextcloud is certainly one of the more complex applications in the self-hosting space. Bugs exist too, I won’t deny that, but overall it works quite well for me.

Of course, If my main goal were to minimize effort or, in my case, to have flawless Android integration, I’d probably still be using Google. But I left them almost seven years ago, and I’m not going back, even if Nextcloud isn’t always as polished and the Android app has had its fair share of annoying bugs as well. :wink:

Ultimately, though, everyone has to decide for themselves how much data sovereignty is worth to them.

…or, there are of course other self-hosted options out there that might work better for you.

10

It’s not that complex. I’m not a total dummy either, I ran basic web servers pretty much since Linux came to be. The thing is that I can have fully set up, configured and properly working Nextcloud instance under 30 minutes and that’s using old school LAMP setup, none of the fancy new dockers and stuff. While troubleshooting a broken server update can take a whole afternoon or worse, since there is never one clear answer to what is wrong, and it usually ends up with a reinstall anyway.

I had it running without a glitch for nearly a year until I made the mistake of updating the Windows and iOS clients, then it just went down the hill from there and I had enough.

I hate commercial could services for variety of reasons (data sovereignty being one of them) and Nextcloud was like a breath of fresh air but the constant update drama ended up being too much for me.

So, for now I’m paying Hetzner to deal with the server stuff. The speed is very good since I’m few hundred km away from their data center. They have the resources to test the updates before deploying them. They only just updated to 31 last week and it went without a glitch. so there is hope. And I’m definitely not touching the clients for as long as they’re compatible with the server.

Cheers!

11

That’s definitely a thing, and at one point I even had to do a manual update, because I couldn’t get it to update either through the CLI or the web updater. However this has gotten way better over time, and I can’t remeber exatley when I last had issues with updating Nextcloud.

I’m running a manual LAMP install as well…

ls -lt /var/log/installer
total 624
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   4096 Feb 11  2017 cdebconf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 127147 Feb 11  2017 initial-status.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    105 Feb 11  2017 lsb-release
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  17727 Feb 11  2017 hardware-summary
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  60878 Feb 11  2017 status
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     67 Feb 11  2017 media-info
-rw------- 1 root root  79115 Feb 11  2017 partman
-rw------- 1 root root 329602 Feb 11  2017 syslog

…and as you can see, I never reinstalled since 2017. I started with Ubuntu 16.04, Nextcloud 12 and PHP 7.1, and now I’m on Ubuntu 24.04, Nextcloud 31 and PHP 8.3. :slight_smile:

However, that didn’t come without pain for me either, and I don’t even want to start counting the hours I’ve invested—not only on the server side, but also on the client side—testing, configuring, and troubleshooting when, for example, auto-upload suddenly stopped working or Collabora didn’t function properly in the mobile app.

On top of that, implementing additional features over time, like preview generation, Office, NotifyPush, and more recently Whiteboard. Optimizing my setup also took a lot of time, as well as keeping the backend up to date (OS, PHP, database, Redis, etc.) and adapting the configurations for new versions of backend services and Nextcloud.

It probably adds up to hundreds of hours. :wink:

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12

Sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you, I stopped visiting these forums.

But yeah, that’s the thing: Nextcloud is too time consuming for my liking. I like learning and tinkering but Nextcloud update issues are simply too annoying, too irritating in their constant re-occurrence and not interesting enough to keep wasting my time on them so that I’d rather pay few € per month to have someone else deal with them.

These problems most likely could be avoided if the software was properly tested before release. And I don’t want to run a separate instance for testing, that’d be ridiculous. My instance is so basic, so stripped down to the the bare necessities, I only use it for storage and synchronization, so that it blows my mind why it breaks so easily.

Anyway, thanks for your input and take care. I’m out!

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Yes. Then you get a tested and “old” release”. But that is normal. Nobody has changed to Windows 11 on the first day of release. :wink:

For really important data i use Nextcloud in older versions e.g. Nextloud 31. Same with Debian Stable. For testing and fun i upgraded on the first day of release to Nextcloud 32 on my test system. Also Debian Sid is cool.

But it is the same like Windows 10 vs. Windows 11 at Windows 11 release day.

However, I do not know whether your iOS problem was actually related to the Nextcloud server version. But it seems to work with Hetzner. So it’s more likely to be a server problem.

14

Yeah, Hetzner (and likely other hosting companies) obviously does fair amount of testing as it took them several weeks to upgrade to the next version.

How an individual (non business) user is supposed to to handle this??? I don’t have the resources, the time nor the inclination to run a separate instance just for testing. How do I know which version will work for me? I know already to never upgrade to x.0 version and wait at least for x.2 but even that doesn’t guarantee a successful Nextcloud upgrade. So hosting seems the better solution.

Yeah, that iOS client issues was likely a server issue.

In over 30 years of using computers I never had so many issues with single piece of software as I did with Nextcloud. I think I have upgrade phobia by now.

Yeah, I use Debian for my servers and I never had any post-upgrade issues but I only use Debian stable releases and I’m still on 12 for foreseeable future. No, I would not attempt to run Debian Sid on my servers.

Cheers!

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I would personally recommend to use Nextcloud AIO: GitHub - nextcloud/all-in-one: 📦 The official Nextcloud installation method. Provides easy deployment and maintenance with most features included in this one Nextcloud instance.

We do in-depth testing before any upgrade.

Disclaimer: I am its main maintainer :sweat_smile:

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Thank you! Yes, I tried the AIO, (I’m aware this is the official way of running Nextcloud server) but there were some issues specific to my situation, if I remember correctly (it was over a year ago):

  • Running at home, there was some issue with NAT that required additional tinkering (reverse proxy or something) that I wasn’t familiar with and not inclined to spend time and mental effort on.
  • I wasn’t able to run a web server on the same box, on the same ports as Nextcloud AIO, since I have just one public IP.

A LAMP setup with a local DNS worked for me as long as I left it alone and never upgraded anything. Even if those AIO issues have been addressed since then I want to stick with Hetzner for a while as I am really, legit tired of Nextcloud.

17

OK, so my “Solution” here is to use Hetzner hosted instance for a while and see how that works, it worked well for now but it’s only been less than two months and only one update.

I suspect it’ll be fine since Hetzner appears to know what they’re doing and they have the resources to test updates thoroughly before deployment. Also, their support is super friendly, responsive and very knowledgeable.

If it works, I’ll stick with them since the synchronization speed and general performance are fine and their price for 1TB is the best there is for a large, reputable provider.

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Hi Adam

Same boat here.
Nextcloud is a suffering road.

The main problem here is the client app is silently crashing randomly, on Windows 11, or Windows 10, updated or not updated to the last version.

I’m looking around currently to other solutions, away from Nextcloud.
I just read you mentioned Nextcloud with Hetzner … but I guess I still face the same client app crashing issue. I spend already hours on this, not days.

I have the same principle to not update just because there is an update, but for the sake of existing stable situation. On updates, the cascade problems are a box of pandora very often.

I guess the clients are crashing due too long namings or too deep folder structure … but that is a very weak approach as users are working in Windows and it is allowed. They have no clue or don’t care there is nextcloud behind for example

you are still on Nextcloud Hetzner now? Or moved to another (localhost) selfhosted solution?

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Hi,

Yes, I’m still on Hetzner, it works well so far. I self-hosted at home for over two years but I grew tired of the constant issues and I gave up. I may give the AIO a try some day if I feel like tinkering with it again, but for now I have a Nextcloud burnout :slight_smile:

My Windows client is OK now, it doesn’t crash as far as I can tell. I run version 3.17.1. I updated it when I switched to Hetzner, but I’m not touching it again as long as it is compatible with the server.

A while ago, I started using this tweak for the Nextcloud Windows client config file, but this is specifically for large files and my client was crashing or failing to sync. I’ve no idea if it’ll help you or even if it’s still needed.

Edit under [General] section

%AppData%\Nextcloud\nextcloud.cfg

Add:

maxChunkSize=50000000

20

My issues are double:

  • failing to sync, killing the sync app and restarting resolves this, but of course not an option to let people work like this

  • or the app crashes, and then I found this error:

    nextcloud.exe 3.17.0.189 689c5929 nextcloudsync_vfs_cfapi.dll 0.0.0.0 689c589d c0000005 000000000000251f 1428 01dc287dd16c4af9 C:\Program Files\Nextcloud\nextcloud.exe C:\Program Files\Nextcloud\nextcloudsync_vfs_cfapi.dll a3f79786-787e-4c6f-9a75-26fa274285d3

    So the virtual file thing is problematic. I turned that off, and the the sync need to be redone 100% which works extremely slowly, speed: few kbits …

    I tested in browser, same client an iso download: 1gbits

    I mean … this is not serious and professional anymore.

    Considering that AIO too to give it a last chance or the Hetzner option.