Why Nextcloud feels slow to use • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#21

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

I'm curious how much Javascript eg gmail and google docs/drive give you, in comparison.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#22

Post by esafak » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

Does anyone know what they are doing wrong to create such large bundles? What is the lesson here?

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#23

Post by tokarf » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #15

NextCloud does feel slow. What I want is not only a cloud service that does lots of common tasks, but it also should do it lightly and simply. I'm extremely tempted to write a lightweight alternative. I'm thinking sourcehut [1] vs GitHub. [1] https://sourcehut.org/

Just compare comparable products.

Nextcloud is an old product that inherit from Owncloud developed in php since 2010. It has extensibility at its core through the thousands of extensions available.

So yaaay compare it with source hut ...

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#24

Post by robin_reala » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #9

For reference, 20 MB is three hundred and thirteen Commodores.

The complete Doom 2, including all graphics, maps, music and sound effects, shipped on 4 floppies, totalling 5.76MB.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#25

Post by ivolimmen » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

On the same note a jira ticket as configured where I work the entire page is 42mb. And I use ad blockers so I already skip the page counting stuff

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#26

Post by yupyupyups » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

tokarf wrote: post #16

Nextcloud not perfect but it's still one of a major project that has not shifted to business oriented licence and where all components are available and not paywalled with enterprise edition. So yes not perfect, bloated js but it works and is maintained. So I'd rather thanks all developers involved in nextcloud than whine about bloated js.

>So I'd rather thanks all developers involved in nextcloud than whine about bloated js.

Good news! You can do both.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#27

Post by palata » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

I would love to like Nextcloud, it's pretty great that it does exist. Just that makes it better than... well everything else I haven't found.

What frustrates me is that it looks like it works, but once in a while it breaks in a way that is pretty much irreparable (or at least not in a practical way).

I want to run an iOS/Android app that backs up images on my server. I tried the iOS app and when it works, it's cool. It's just that once in a while I get errors like "locked webdav" files and it never seems to recover, or sometimes it just stops synchronising and the only way to recover seems to be to restart the sync from zero. It will gladly upload 80GB of pictures "for nothing", discarding each one when it arrives on the server because it already exists (or so it seems, maybe it just overwrites everything).

The thing is that I want my family to use the app, so I can't access their phone for multiple hours every 2 weeks; it has to work reliably.

If it was just for backing up my photos... well I don't need Nextcloud for that.

Again, alternatives just don't seem to exist, where I can install an app on my parent's iOS and have it synchronise their photo gallery in the background. Except I guess iCloud, that is.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#28

Post by bastawhiz » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

esafak wrote: post #22

Does anyone know what they are doing wrong to create such large bundles? What is the lesson here?

Not paying attention.

1. Indiscriminate use of packages when a few lines of code would do.

2. Loading everything on every page.

3. Poor bundling strategy, if any.

4. No minification step.

5. Polyfilling for long dead, obsolete browsers

6. Having multiple libraries that accomplish the same thing

7. Using tools and then not doing any optimization at all (like using React and not enabling React Runtime)

Arguably things like an email client and file storage are apps and not pages so a SPA isn't unreasonable. The thing is, you don't end up with this much code by being diligent and following best practices. You get here by being lazy or uninformed.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#29

Post by danielcberman » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

Saris wrote: post #12

joshgachnang wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good file syncing/drive replacements? My Synology exists pretty much because Synology Drives works so well syncing Mac and iOS.

Syncthing is great, but doesnt offer selective sync or virtual files if you need those features. Owncloud infinite scale might be the best option for a full featured file sync setup, as thats all it does.

It’s not selective sync, but you can get something similar with Ignore Files [1] in SynchThing. This functionality can also be configured via the webGUI and within apps such as MobiusSync [2].

1. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/ignoring.html

2. https://mobiussync.com

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#30

Post by dade_ » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #27

I would love to like Nextcloud, it's pretty great that it does exist. Just that makes it better than... well everything else I haven't found. What frustrates me is that it looks like it works, but once in a while it breaks in a way that is pretty much irreparable (or at least not in a practical way). I want to run an iOS/Android app that backs up images on my server. I tried the iOS app and when it works, it's cool.…

The next cloud android app is particularly bad if you use it to back up your cameras DCIM directory then you delete the photos on your phone. It overwrite the files on Nextcloud as new photos are taken. I get why this happened but it is terrible.