{icon:Nextcloud} Nextcloud

What is Nextcloud?

Nextcloud is free, open source software for your own private cloud. Think of it as a self hosted alternative to Dropbox or Google Drive: it runs on a server you (or your school) control, gives every person their own account, and stores files you can reach from any device.

A school typically runs one Nextcloud for many classes and students. The administrator creates an account per student, and openDAW connects to each account to store that student's projects.

How openDAW uses it

openDAW can read and write your projects directly in a Nextcloud instance you control, using WebDAV (the standard protocol Nextcloud speaks for file access). Samples and soundfonts are stored once in a shared assets/ folder and reused across projects, so they are never uploaded twice.

openDAW talks to your Nextcloud straight from the browser. Your files and credentials never pass through an openDAW server.

Everything openDAW stores is kept inside a single openDAW/ folder in your account, so the rest of your Nextcloud is free for other apps. Please do not rename or edit those files by hand (a README.txt in that folder says the same), as openDAW relies on its own catalog and shared assets.

What you need

  1. A Nextcloud instance where you are the administrator (self hosted, or a managed instance such as Hetzner Storage Share where you hold admin). A free shared account on someone else's instance will not work, because openDAW needs an admin level app install and an origin setting.
  2. A valid HTTPS certificate on the instance. Browsers refuse cross origin WebDAV to a plain HTTP server. Managed hosts and Let's Encrypt provide this automatically.

Set up Nextcloud for openDAW

Do this once for the whole school, as the admin.

Heads-up on the name: the app you install below is called WebAppPassword, but despite the name it has nothing to do with per-user "app passwords". It is the small bridge that lets a browser app (openDAW) talk to your Nextcloud, by allowing requests from opendaw.studio. You install and configure it once, and students never need to create any kind of app password (see Connect from openDAW).

  1. Sign in as the admin. Click your avatar (top right), then Apps.
  2. Open the Security category, find WebAppPassword, then click Download and enable. If it is not listed (some locked down hosting blocks the app store), install it manually: download the webapppassword release archive, upload the unpacked webapppassword/ folder into your Nextcloud apps/ directory via SFTP, then enable it under Apps.
  3. Click your avatar, then Administration settings, then WebAppPassword in the left sidebar.
  4. In the WebDAV/CalDAV allowed origins field, add https://opendaw.studio, then click Set origins. If you cannot use the app store, set this instead in config/config.php via SFTP:
    'webapppassword.origins' => ['https://opendaw.studio'],

Test the connection (optional)

openDAW has a hidden tester that confirms the setup works before any student uses it.

  1. In openDAW, open the menu, then Preferences, open the Debug section, and turn on Enable Debug Menu.
  2. A new Debug entry now appears in the openDAW menu. Open it and click Validate Nextcloud Access....
  3. Enter the server URL, a username, and that account's password (your admin account works fine for this test), then confirm. openDAW runs a connect, upload, download, list, and delete round trip and reports whether it succeeded. A success message means WebAppPassword and the allowed origin are set up correctly.

Create student accounts

Each student needs their own Nextcloud account. Repeat this for every student.

  1. Sign in as the admin.
  2. Click your avatar (top right), then Accounts (called Users in older Nextcloud).
  3. Click + New account (top left).
  4. Fill in:
    1. Username (the login name), for example student-anna. Keep it short, lowercase, no spaces.
    2. Display name, for example Anna M..
    3. Password. Set one for the student. This username and password are exactly the credentials the student enters in openDAW.
    4. Quota (optional), for example 2 GB, to cap how much each student can store.
  5. Click Add new account.
  6. Repeat for every student.

Whole class at once: on the Accounts page, open the {icon:MainMenu} menu (top left) and choose Import accounts, then upload a CSV file with one row per student (username,displayname,password,quota).

Advise students not to change or share this password. A teacher reviews a student's work by logging into openDAW with that student's username and password, so changing the password would lock the teacher out, and sharing it with classmates invites tampering. If a student must change it, they should give the teacher the new password.

Connect from openDAW

Each student does this on their own computer, and again whenever they sit at a shared computer, because openDAW never stores the username or password.

  1. In openDAW, open the Nextcloud menu, then Browse projects... (to open) or Upload project... (to save the current project).
  2. In the connect dialog enter:
    1. Server URL, for example https://nextcloud.your-school.org.
    2. Username, the Nextcloud account name (created in Create student accounts).
    3. Password, that account's password.
  3. Click Connect.

The connect dialog appears every time, so different people can use the same computer in turn. Only the server URL is remembered (to save retyping); the username and password are never stored.

Only exception: if an account has two factor authentication turned on, Nextcloud will not accept the normal password here. That account then creates a one time app password in Nextcloud (avatar, then Settings, then Security, then Create new app password) and uses that in the Password field. Freshly created school accounts do not have two factor login, so this rarely comes up.

Using openDAW with Nextcloud

Your projects always live in your own Nextcloud account, under your control.