I just want to confirm whether this behavior is expected – that if a user is assigned to any additional group during creation, they lose Guest status and are not included in the Guest group at all.
I create a new user and assign them to the Guest group during creation.
During the same creation step, I also assign the user to another existing group (e.g., “Team”).
After the user is created, they are no longer in the Guest group and remain only in the “Team” group.
Tested on Nextcloud AIO 30.0.10 - v10.13.0 Hub 9 running on Ubuntu 24.04.
In this screenshot, a new user is being created. It’s also visible that the Guest group is empty, even though multiple Guest user accounts have been created:
I’m not familiar with the guests app but I could imagine there is some magic around the guests group as guests accounts are special and likely they must not be created from “new user account” but rather the specific procedure:
Creating a guest
Create a guest user by typing their email address into the sharing dialog
(it possible to convert guests into regular accounts later - but using “new account” you don’t create a “guest” you create a regular account… maybe this are not allowed to be member in guests group?
looks you are not the only one having trouble adding users to “Guests” group
Based on your reply and the resources you found and shared, I’ve confirmed the following:
A Guest user can only be created via a sharing link. If the user is created through the admin interface, it is always a regular account, regardless of the username or attempts to assign it to the Guest group.
If a guest user is assigned to another group during creation (e.g. plex_media), the guest status is lost. This explains why the Guest group remains empty, even though several accounts were created with the intention of being guest users.
Next step:
I’ll test the behavior by creating a user solely through a sharing link, without assigning any additional groups. In that case, the user should correctly be added to the Guest group.
Acknowledging the effort you put into finding and sharing relevant links and information that helped clarify the issue.
→ see you own finding #1 - a user created from the admin interface is always a regular user never a guest - so it’s pointless to try add them to a Guests group (because there are many fundamental differences e.g. home directory, quota etc..)
I’m too lazy now for search for references but form the guests-app I remember guests could be added to groups after creation.. and you could create guests using occ in advance if it helps you with you “administrative” approach (less click around) - look at the docs above
@wwe I think I’m starting to understand it better now.
From what you explained, it’s clear that the “Guest” status doesn’t depend directly on being in the “Guests” group, but rather on how the user account is created.
If the account is created through the sharing dialog or with the occ guests:add command, it’s properly recognized as a guest.
But if it’s created via the admin interface and just assigned to the “Guests” group, that alone isn’t enough — the user is treated as a regular account.
From a technical point of view, that makes sense, although it can definitely be confusing at first — especially for admins who expect the group to define the account type.
No need to dig any deeper into it — things make much more sense now.
You’ve already helped me a lot.
One thing I feel is missing in Nextcloud is a simple way to import users from a .csv file.
It would be great to have bulk user creation with just a few columns — name, email, password, groups — basically the same fields you fill out when registering a user manually.
That kind of functionality would make it much easier to onboard a larger number of users at once.
A Guest user can only be created via a sharing link.
If the user is created through the admin interface, it is always a regular account, regardless of the username or attempts to assign it to the Guest group.
If a guest user is assigned to another group during creation (e.g. 
Next step:
Acknowledging the effort you put into finding and sharing relevant links and information that helped clarify the issue.