I had been running Nextcloud on a Synology DS923+ for about three years when I finally admitted I was not using it. The web UI took five to eight seconds to load a folder. The desktop sync client was crashing every few days. The Android app was the kind of slow that makes you stop opening it. I kept it running because Nextcloud was the default answer, and because the alternative felt like admitting defeat. Then I tried File Browser (a single-binary web-based file manager written in Go, with no database, designed to be a thin layer over a directory on disk), and I deleted Nextcloud the same weekend. The replacement is not for everyone. For what I actually needed, it is exactly right.
What I was using Nextcloud for
I had Nextcloud because I thought I needed Nextcloud. The use cases I had told myself I was solving:
- Browse files on my NAS from a web browser, away from home.
- Edit the occasional Markdown note in a pinch.
- Share a link to a folder with a contractor.
- Sync a folder of receipts between my laptop and the NAS.
What I actually used it for, after three years:
- Browse files. That is it. Maybe ninety-five percent of my Nextcloud sessions were clicking into a folder and downloading a file.
The other twenty things Nextcloud does (calendars, contacts, chat, document editing, talk, deck, the whole app ecosystem) I never opened. I have a separate calendar tool. I have a separate notes tool. I have a separate chat tool. Nextcloud’s value proposition for me was the file browser, and the file browser was slow.
What File Browser is
File Browser is an open source web UI for a directory on disk. It runs as a single Go binary, listens on a port, and lets you browse, upload, download, rename, delete, and edit files. There is no database. There is no sync client. There is no app. The configuration is a single JSON file. The install is one Docker container, no Postgres, no Redis, no reverse-proxy requirements beyond the standard one.
I had it running on the Synology in about ten minutes. The first time I opened the web UI, I clicked into a folder with 1,200 photos in it. The thumbnails rendered in under a second. The page felt like browsing a local file manager, except it was a tab in Chrome.
The list of what I get from File Browser:
- Web UI that loads in under a second for folders of a few thousand files.
- Built-in text editor with syntax highlighting for Markdown, JSON, YAML, and most of the languages I touch.
- Search across file names, with substring match and basic filtering.
- Drag-and-drop upload, including multi-file drops.
- Shareable links with optional password and expiration, generated with a click.
- User management with per-user or per-folder permissions, which I use to give the contractor scoped access to one project folder.
The list of what it does not do is the point. There is no desktop sync. There is no mobile app. There is no calendar. There is no chat. File Browser is a file browser. That is the whole pitch.
What the migration looked like
The migration was, in order:
- Stop the Nextcloud container.
- Start the File Browser container, pointing at the same
/volume1/datadirectory on the Synology. - Reset my muscle memory for the URL (
nas.lan:8080instead ofcloud.lan). - Stop the Nextcloud desktop sync client and accept that I would manually copy files I wanted to sync.
The only part that hurt was step four. I had a one-way sync from a “Receipts” folder on my laptop to the NAS, and I lost that. The replacement is a rsync -avz ~/Documents/Receipts/ nas:/volume1/data/Receipts/ on a weekly cron, which is honestly less work than the Nextcloud sync client was when it was working. And it never crashes.
The two contractor share-links I had active in Nextcloud I regenerated in File Browser with a one-week expiration, sent them to the contractor, and the contractor did not notice the switch. That is the right outcome for a tool replacement: the user does not care which UI the file is served from, as long as the link works.
What I gave up
I gave up the desktop sync. That is the headline cost, and the only one I have actually missed.
The other things I gave up, and why I do not miss them:
- Mobile app. The Nextcloud Android app was the only way I read PDFs on my phone from the NAS. The replacement is opening the File Browser URL in Chrome mobile, which works fine. The UI is responsive, the download button is in the obvious place, and I no longer have to keep an app updated.
- Built-in document editing. I used Nextcloud’s Collabora integration twice. Both times, the document editor took longer to load than the file would have taken to download, edit in Vim, and re-upload. File Browser has a built-in text editor that handles Markdown and JSON, which is all I actually needed.
- Calendar and contacts sync. I have been paying for Fastmail for these for years, and the Nextcloud calendar was redundant. Removing the redundancy was a relief.
- The “I have a Nextcloud” badge. This is the real one. Self-hosters trade stories, and “I run Nextcloud” is a recognizable sentence. “I run File Browser” is a sentence that gets a polite nod and a follow-up question. I am fine with that.
What I would tell past me
If I could send a message back to the version of me that installed Nextcloud in 2022, I would say four things:
- You do not need the whole office suite. You need a file browser. The office suite is overhead.
- Speed is a feature. A web UI that loads in five seconds is one you stop using. A web UI that loads in one second is one you keep using.
- Single-binary tools age well. File Browser has one process, one config file, and one place where things can break. That is a smaller surface area than Nextcloud’s, and it shows.
- The Synology could already browse files. The native File Station app on the Synology was faster than Nextcloud for most of what I needed, and it required zero setup. I should have started there.
Trade-offs
File Browser is not a drop-in replacement for Nextcloud. There is no desktop sync, so if you keep a folder mirrored between your laptop and your server, you are back to cron jobs and rsync. The mobile experience is “open a web URL” rather than “open a native app,” and that is a real downgrade for anyone who is in their phone’s file browser constantly. The user management is simpler than Nextcloud’s, which is good for me and bad for a family or a small team with five permission tiers. The search is filename-only, so if you have a folder of 10,000 Markdown notes and you want to grep the contents, you are out of luck unless you shell in.
In our case, the trade was the right one. I was paying $0 in software (Nextcloud is free) but several hours a year in maintenance, plus the daily tax of a slow UI. File Browser has cost me maybe twenty minutes of maintenance in the six months since I installed it, and I open the UI more often because it is fast. The math was not even close.
If you use Nextcloud for the calendar, the contacts, the chat, and the document editing, File Browser is a clear loss. If you use Nextcloud for the file browser and nothing else, the migration is a weekend and the result is something you will not regret.
Bottom line
I deleted Nextcloud because I was paying for a feature I did not use, in slowness I had stopped noticing. File Browser is the file browser I should have installed on day one. If you have a NAS, a directory of files you actually want to browse, and the willingness to give up the desktop sync, the migration is a single weekend. The web UI will be the fastest thing in your self-hosted stack. That is the whole review.