How do I search for an App within Nextcloud?
I want to search for an App in all categories.
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It’s quite remarkable, that this most fundamental functionality either does not exist or is not accessible in an intuitive way.
What is the purpose of the Apps view in Nextcloud (aside from administrating already installed apps) ?
To install an app.
Usually it’s not some random app you’d like to discover, it is most likely an app you know by it’s name. So the single most important feature is to enter the name of the app to find it and to install it.
But no, you need to go through all the sections and read through the apps.
The Apps view in Nextcloud would be far more useful if you’d remove everything and only provide a search prompt.
Sorry for the rant, but think about it.
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For me, Nextcloud’s search function finds every app I search for, regardless of the category selected in the sidebar.
Here is an example search for Solitaire while I am in the Files category…
…and no, the app wasn’t already installed and it is not listed in the Files category either. 
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Thanks, i will try the general search outside of the apps view.
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Hello, after years there’s still no search for apps function in nextcloud 
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I can’t believe you can’t search for apps in Nextcloud itself. I tried it and it only searches apps that are installed (which is not helpful). my current workaround is searching for them online, making a mental note of the category listed, clicking on that category in the Nextcloud app browser, and then looking on that page for the app. even a rudimentary search would be preferable to this nonsense
Please see the post from @bb77 above, the search works just fine.
I once had exactly the same problem.
My solution:
the → nc-apps ← script (for debian/ubuntu hosts) comes with various search functions which makes it really easy to search for apps on the commandline.
For example, if one only knows (part of) the app-name:
nc-apps name=<patern>
or if one only knows (part of) the app-id:
nc-apps id=<pattern>
You will love it.
Much and good luck,
ernolf
Sorry, but that’s just not true. Maybe it could be more intuitive, but you can definitely search for apps within Nextcloud, especially if you already know the exact name. Just click on any category and then use the global search, as in my screenshot above.
Yes, MUCH more intuitive. I’ve used nextcloud for years and NEVER found out that I needed to click on ANY category and search on the general search. Now many year later I got so tired of there not being a proper search I had to look it up and also figure out my old password just to post this. Yes, it works, but the design is crap. Just the facts that people still think there is no search is pretty apparent. Please (Brent?) send this to the right people? hehe
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Feel free to open an issue: https://github.com/nextcloud/server
Heh…it’s still a stunning omission. (And, YES, people, it’s a failure. The comments about searching doesn’t seem to work with V31 right now. “Preview Generator” pulls up NOTHING on my install…and there’s nothing otherwise wrong- if it’s something needing to be turned on, it should’ve been on by default.)
The MAIN problem with logging an issue is there’s a serious impedance there- issues are complex things based on my trip over there and I got reminded of the LAST time why I didn’t bother.
You don’t fob off your triage efforts, etc. onto your users. It should be a simple affair that a team member asks for a bunch of things if they’re not supplied.
One can’t just log a request as you GLIBLY put forth.
It’s a damned nuisance so I put up with it and not bother- which isn’t productive on their part. (And before you comment…go look at my GitHub repos…I know how this works.)
Nothing needs to be turned on. Just click on any app category, or literally anything in the left sidebar except for ‘Discover’, and the search will work.
And yes, this is not ideal, it would be nice if the search worked without having to click anywhere first, but resources are not unlimited, so developers have to prioritise, and “nice to have” is not always their first priority.
That’s not a nice-to-have, to be blunt. There’s tons of OTHER things that don’t seem to get fixed either. Like WebDAV performance…which is also at-issue.
It’s nice that it’s a community effort, but there IS a company involved with this and some of what you’re peddling is…unacceptable…in that context. They get paid to make this come together and this is a fit-n-finish fail for a product that is supposed to be a FOSS Commercial item.
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To be even MORE blunt. AI is a nice-to-have over the other stuff there- and…yet…here we are with it all. You have AI in there when you can’t realistically search for stuff. And, NO, what’s being proffered isn’t that.
Now, make no mistake. This is not a piss-n-moan at them. This is intended to be a bit of actual constructive feedback from someone that DOES this stuff too…just in the Embedded Linux space. Being the front-runner in the space sets expectations…and things being dodgy and asking for understanding only kind of works with folks when you have your ducks in a row on something like the subject we’re discussing…which isn’t the case.
Maybe ‘nice to have’ wasn’t the best term to describe it, but as you say yourself, there are other things to fix and improve that are certainly more pressing and directly affect the experience of end users working with Nextcloud on a daily basis.
This particular issue on the other hand only affects admins, and it’s not like searching for applications doesn’t work at all, so I’d call it a minor inconvenience once you’ve figured out how to work around it. Installing apps isn’t something I do every day either.
I, for one, didn’t pay a penny for using the software. You probably haven’t either, otherwise you’d be using the appropriate channels to send your complaints directly to the company, rather than resurrecting an already ‘solved’ thread (although not marked as such) on the forums.
Why do I consider it solved, you may ask? Because this is a community forum, where users help other users, and a specific question has been asked and answered, so the forum has served its purpose.
Forum members can only work with what’s already there, we can’t offer solutions that the product itself doesn’t offer. So as of March 2025, the only way to search for apps from the UI is to first click on a category in the sidebar, and until that changes, for better or worse, I consider this thread solved.
Sorry, I’m going to close this here. As you know, we are just users here, we just can share our experience. But we don’t change code, we don’t implement features, we don’t fix bugs.
So if there are issues with the current behavior, and other people here just say it is like it is at the moment, we can complain to each other but it does not help. Please address these issue right with the developers on github because they are the ones who can actually change things.
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