File Sharing

Nextcloud users can share files with their Nextcloud groups and other users on the same Nextcloud server, with Nextcloud users on other Nextcloud servers, and create public shares for people who are not Nextcloud users. You have control of a number of user permissions on file shares.

Configure your sharing policy on your Admin page in the Sharing section.

• Check Allow apps to use the Share API to enable users to share files. If this is not checked, no users can create file shares.

  • Check Allow resharing to enable users to re-share files shared with them.

  • Check Allow sharing with groups to enable users to share with groups.

  • Check Restrict users to only share with users in their groups to confine sharing within group memberships. When you check this, you’ll get an optional dropdown list of ignored groups when checking group membership. Type any group name to search for.

    • Groups added to Ignore the following groups when checking group membership won’t be taken in account to determine if users are in same groups and may share with each others.

    Note

    This setting does not apply to the Federated Cloud sharing feature. If Federated Cloud Sharing is enabled, users can still share items with any users on any instances (including the one they are on) via a remote share.

• Check Allow users to share via link and email to enable creating public shares for people who are not Nextcloud users via hyperlink.

  • Check Allow public uploads to allow anyone to upload files to public shares.

  • Check Always ask for a password to proactively ask a user to set a password for a share link.

  • Check Enforce password protection to force users to set a password on all public share links. This does not apply to local user and group shares.

  • Add groups to Exclude groups from creating link shares to no apply the settings for that groups.

• Check Exclude groups from sharing to prevent members of specific groups from creating any file shares in those groups. When you check this, you’ll get a dropdown list of all your groups to choose from. Type any group name to search for. Members of excluded groups can still receive shares, but not create any.

• Check Set default expiration date for shares to set a default expiration date on local user and group shares.

  • Check Enforce expiration date to always enforce the configured expiration date on local user and group shares.

    Note

    Users will not be able to set the expiration date further in the future than the enforced expiration date, although they will be able to set a more recent date. Also note that users will be able to update the expiration date again at a later point. The expiration date is based on the current date and not on the share creation date. The user will be able to extend the expiration date again whenever a previous expiration date is close to be reached.

• Check Set default expiration date for shares via link or email to set a default expiration date on public shares.

  • Check Enforce expiration date to always enforce the configured expiration date on public shares.

    Note

    Users will not be able to set the expiration date further in the future than the enforced expiration date, although they will be able to set a more recent date. Also note that users will be able to update the expiration date again at a later point. The expiration date is based on the current date and not on the share creation date. The user will be able to extend the expiration date again whenever a previous expiration date is close to be reached.

• Check Allow username autocompletion in share dialog and allow access to the system address book to enable auto-completion of Nextcloud usernames and list the system address book as resource when syncing contacts with CardDAV.

  • Check Allow username autocompletion to users within the same groups and limit system address books to users in the same groups to limit username autocompletion to users from within the same groups as the share owner.

  • Check Allow username autocompletion to users based on phone number integration to limit username autocompletion to users when the share owner has synced their phone address book via the Nextcloud Talk mobile clients and it contained the phone number the user configured in their profile.

• Check Allow autocompletion when entering the full name or email address (ignoring missing phonebook match and being in the same group) to show despite of the previous restrictions a user suggestion, when the complete display name or user id was typed.

• Check Show disclaimer text on the public link upload page to set and show a disclaimer text on public links with hidden file lists. If you enable this feature a text input will be shown to input the disclaimer text.

With Default share permissions you are able to set the default permissions for user-shares (Create, Change, Delete and Reshare) without forcing them.

Note

Nextcloud does not preserve the mtime (modification time) of directories, though it does update the mtimes on files. See Wrong folder date when syncing for discussion of this.

Note

There are more sharing options on config.php level available: Configuration Parameters

Advanced settings

Here are some edge case settings which are not editable from the web interface, because they are only useful to small subset of administrators.

You can use the occ command to update those, for example:

occ config:app:set core shareapi_restrict_user_enumeration_full_match_email --value yes

• core.shareapi_restrict_user_enumeration_full_match_ignore_second_display_name

  • When full match is activated, ignore the appended second display name.

  • Default: no

  • Examples:

    Setting value	Search query	User name	Will match
    yes	User 1	User 1 (Second display name)	yes
    no	User 1	User 1 (Second display name)	no

• core.shareapi_restrict_user_enumeration_full_match_userid

  • When full match is activated, do not match user ID

  • Default: yes

• core.shareapi_restrict_user_enumeration_full_match_email

  • When full match is activated, do not match user email

  • Default: yes

Distinguish between max expiration date and default expiration date

The expiration date which can be set and enforced in the settings above are the hard limit and the default value at the same time. Sometimes admins want to have a moderate default expire date, for example 7 days but make sure that the user can’t extend it to more than 14 days.

In order to do so, set a enforced expiration date in the settings as described above and set the default value to something below the maximal possible expiration date with the following OCC commands:

occ config:app:set --value <DAYS> core internal_defaultExpDays
occ config:app:set --value <DAYS> core link_defaultExpDays

Get a notification before a share expires

Users can get a notification before a share expires. In order to do so a cronjob need to be configured which calls the following OCC command once a day:

occ sharing:expiration-notification

A notification will be send for all shares which expire within the next 24 hours.

Transferring files to another user

You may transfer files from one user to another with occ. This is useful when you have to remove a user. Be sure to transfer the files before you delete the user! This transfers all files from user1 to user2, and the shares and metadata info associated with those files (shares, tags, comments, etc). Trashbin contents are not transferred:

occ files:transfer-ownership user1 user2

(See Using the occ command for a complete occ reference.)

Users may also transfer files or folders selectively by themselves. See user documentation for details.

Creating persistent file Shares

When a user is deleted, their files are also deleted. As you can imagine, this is a problem if they created file shares that need to be preserved, because these disappear as well. In Nextcloud files are tied to their owners, so whatever happens to the file owner also happens to the files.

One solution is to create persistent shares for your users. You can retain ownership of them, or you could create a special user for the purpose of establishing permanent file shares. Simply create a shared folder in the usual way, and share it with the users or groups who need to use it. Set the appropriate permissions on it, and then no matter which users come and go, the file shares will remain. Because all files added to the share, or edited in it, automatically become owned by the owner of the share regardless of who adds or edits them.

Using File Drop Share links

Using a File Drop Share allows users to upload files to Nextcloud through an unauthenticated session. File Drop Share links will only work when Allow public uploads is checked in the Sharing section of the Administration Settings page.

Note

File Drop Shares currently have a limitation in that any files uploaded through an unauthenticated session will not be chunked. Therefore the maximum file size that can be uploaded through File Drop Shares depends entirely on settings set within your environment.