Nextcloud Talk is the built-in chat and video conferencing solution — Slack-like for chat, Zoom-like for video. All on your server, no third-party clouds, no extra licenses.
Talk has strengths and clear weaknesses. We’ll go through both, concretely.
What Talk does well
- Personal chats and group chats between Nextcloud users
- File sharing directly in chat (with preview, straight from your Nextcloud)
- Voice and video calls — stable up to ~25 participants in our setup
- Screen sharing
- External guests joining conferences via a sharing link
- Mobile app on iOS and Android with push notifications
- Encrypted in transit (TLS; audio/video in small calls end-to-end — details below)
What Talk can’t do (well) — the limits
This is where it gets important. Talk is built for chats and small to medium calls — not for large conferences.
In our setup, concretely:
- Video conferences up to ~25 participants run stable
- Beyond that, quality depends heavily on the participants’ internet connections
- No breakout rooms, no full-featured whiteboard, recording only in a limited form
The technical background: Without server-side stream distribution, Talk runs a P2P mesh — every participant has direct connections to all others. With 10 participants: 10×9/2 = 45 parallel streams in the background, each with audio/video encoding/decoding. That doesn’t scale forever. How the High Performance Backend (HPB) solves this technically is covered in Talk High Performance Backend.
For regularly larger conferences — with breakout rooms, a whiteboard and recording — BigBlueButton is the better tool. We offer BBB as an add-on to every Nextcloud plan: a dedicated server per customer, fully managed. Plans and prices on the Nextcloud product page.
First steps with Talk
Click the Talk icon in the top navigation (speech bubble).
You’ll see:
- Conversation list on the left: your chats and rooms
- Chat area on the right: the active conversation
- + at the top: start a new conversation
New conversation
Three types:
- Direct chat: 1-on-1 with a user
- Group chat: with multiple users
- Public room: accessible via link, also for guests without an account
Per conversation, you can:
- Start a call with a keyboard shortcut
- Share your screen
- Share a file from Nextcloud
- Send a direct message
- Use pinning, reactions, threads
Starting a video conference
In an active conversation: click Start call at the top right → choose audio + video or audio only.
Participants get a push notification. If they’re online, they join right away.
External guests reach the conference via the conversation link.
Screen sharing
During a call: the Share screen button. The browser asks which screen/application to share. Other participants see your screen.
Works with:
- Browser-based screen selection (Chrome, Firefox, Edge)
- Standalone Talk apps (Mac, Windows, iOS, Android)
Public rooms — conferences with externals
The classic use case: you want a video call with someone from outside (customer, supplier) who isn’t in your Nextcloud.
- Create a new conversation as a public room.
- Copy the conversation link.
- Send it to the external person by mail or messenger.
- The external guest clicks the link, enters a name (no account needed), joins.
Security options for public rooms:
- Set a password
- Enable the lobby — guests wait until you let them in
- Set an expiration date for the link
Talk on your smartphone
Mobile apps on iOS and Android, in the respective app store. Functionally full Talk usage — chat, calls, video conferencing, screen sharing (limited).
Push notifications work — they come through the respective push service providers (Apple Push Notification Service, Firebase Cloud Messaging). Important: push tokens have to be configured in Nextcloud; we do that as standard during provisioning.
Encryption
Plain facts, so no wrong expectations arise:
- Chat messages are TLS-encrypted in transit and stored in your Nextcloud’s database — with us, in Germany, not at a third-party cloud. Talk does not offer end-to-end encryption for chat messages — the server can technically read them. In return, search and history work server-side without restriction.
- Audio and video in small calls run directly between participants (WebRTC with DTLS-SRTP) — these streams are end-to-end encrypted.
- As soon as a High Performance Backend distributes the streams, media encryption terminates at the server: encrypted to the server and back out, but the server processes the streams.
If you need end-to-end encryption for files: that’s a separate Nextcloud feature — see End-to-end encryption.
Talk desktop app
There’s a standalone app for macOS, Windows, Linux — based on Electron. Either download it from the Nextcloud Talk repository or use your browser’s web-app feature (PWA).
Advantages: better notifications integration, a dedicated app in the taskbar.
When Talk, when an alternative?
Talk fits for:
- Daily internal communication in small and medium teams (up to ~25 people)
- Occasional external conferences with 2–5 people
- Privacy-critical environments where Zoom/Teams don’t fit
BigBlueButton (or another tool) is better when:
- Regular conferences with 25+ participants → BigBlueButton add-on
- Webinars with many viewers, breakout rooms, whiteboard → BigBlueButton as well
- You need reliable recording — Talk only has that in a limited form, BBB ships with it
Our recommendation: for a club setup with 5–8 board members, Talk is easily enough. For regular larger conferences: book the BigBlueButton add-on — Talk and BBB aren’t mutually exclusive, many customers run both in parallel.
Frequently asked questions
How many participants does Talk really handle with you? Stable up to ~25 in our setup — provided participants have decent connections. If you’re regularly above that, take the BigBlueButton add-on.
Can I book an HPB with you as an add-on? Yes — since September 2026 as Nextcloud Talk HPB: €10/month per server, for up to 50 concurrent Talk users, pluggable into any Nextcloud. For conferences with webinar ambitions (breakout rooms, whiteboard, recording), the BigBlueButton add-on remains the better choice.
Can I record conferences on Talk? With the Talk recording app (separate, in the app store), yes, in a limited form. Recording runs on the server and is disk-intensive. With active conferences: check that there’s enough storage.
Does screen sharing work on iPad/iPhone? On iPad, yes (with ScreenBroadcast). On iPhone, limited by Apple’s restrictions.
What if push notifications don’t arrive? On the server side, the push service is configured. On the client side: check in the Nextcloud mobile app settings that notifications are enabled. On iOS occasionally: a full app reinstall helps.
Can we use Talk instead of Microsoft Teams for the entire company? For small companies (≤25 users): yes. For larger ones: Talk doesn’t scale as well as Teams or Zoom — and the feature list is slimmer. A practical approach: Talk for internal communication, the BigBlueButton add-on for regular big meetings.
Talk and Calendar — do they sync? You can create appointments in Calendar and attach a Talk conversation as the conference link. But they’re two separate apps.
Browser recommendation for Talk? Chrome / Edge / Firefox, up to date. Safari can occasionally be annoying with WebRTC quirks — we recommend Chrome on Mac and Windows for the most stable conference experience.
What’s next
First login as a Nextcloud admin
What to do after your Nextcloud is provisioned — login, profile, the important first settings, what we handle and what you handle.
Admin GUI overview — what you'll find where
Nextcloud's administration settings are big. Here's a tour of the sections that matter and what they do.
Creating users and groups
Create users for family, club or team, organize groups, set quotas, control login behavior.
Sharing — files with others, internally and externally
Sharing files in Nextcloud — within your cloud with other users, with groups, or externally via sharing link.