Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: A decade of open source data sovereignty and innovations

Improvements to the user interface and user experience

The Hub 26 Spring Update introduces several design changes aimed at improving workflow efficiency. A new waffle menu centralizes access to apps, reducing on-screen clutter as users' libraries grow. Navigation menus have been visually adjusted to reduce distractions, and the right sidebar now features color-coded active tabs with animated markers. These changes, along with various usability improvements in the settings menu, are the result of ongoing feedback from the community.

Diversification of the Office suites

A significant addition to the ecosystem is Euro-Office, a European open source initiative. Users can now choose between Euro-Office and the Collabora-based suite depending on their specific requirements. While Collabora is known for its security and ODF compatibility, Euro-Office offers high compatibility with Microsoft Office files and optimized browser performance. Euro-Office can also be integrated into the Nextcloud app for iOS and Android.

For those who continue to use Collabora, the update brings a new AI chat sidebar via the Nextcloud Assistant, a customizable status bar and improved spreadsheet features, such as warnings for incorrect formula references and resizable autofilter dropdowns.

Improved teamwork and communication

The platform has enhanced its communication tools to enable better coordination. With Nextcloud Talk, users can now start calls instantly via user avatars and organize conversations using tags. New features include private replies to group messages and the introduction of voice rooms.

Project management is further strengthened in Nextcloud Deck with Gantt charts, card dependencies and start date tracking. Likewise, Nextcloud Tables now supports fixing columns, duplicating rows and the ability to share editable tables via public links.

In the groupware area, delegation within Mail and Calendar is now possible, allowing users to manage communication and appointments on behalf of colleagues. In addition, Nextcloud Mail now supports read and write access for external CalDAV and CardDAV servers.

AI integration and the Nextcloud Assistant

The Nextcloud Assistant has been enhanced with a context agent that enables universal search across the entire Hub. The AI is now more deeply integrated into mobile devices, allowing users to interact with the Assistant via the context menus of Android and iOS. On the backend, the Assistant now supports Kubernetes for context chat functions and LLM2, while the user interface can now be dragged and dropped and resized to enable multitasking in side-by-side mode.

Enterprise governance and developer support

To meet the needs of large organizations, Nextcloud has introduced Nextcloud Governance. This toolset provides sensitivity labels for access control, legal hold capabilities for file retention and tools to manage the data lifecycle according to legal requirements.

For the developer community, Nextcloud has launched an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) program. This initiative offers vendors the opportunity to promote their apps in the App Store and offer professional support. This is supported by a new developer relations team that focuses on stabilizing APIs and improving technical documentation.

System stability and community growth

Despite the new features, most of the development work in this release focused on technical debt. About 96% of the code changes were for maintenance, including security patches, performance optimizations and bug fixes.

The release also introduces new community-developed applications, including Linkboard for service monitoring, a weekly planner and Pantry for household management, reflecting the growth of the platform as a collaborative open source project.