Nextcloud Platform: Laying bricks for a growing ecosystem of apps

The Nextcloud App Store has around 600 apps. The goal is 6,000.

For this episode, we recorded live on stage at the Nextcloud Community Conference 2026 in Berlin. Our guest is Andy Scherzinger, VP of Engineering at Nextcloud, who already told us about his path into open source in an earlier episode. This time, we skip the backstory and go straight to one ambitious question: where will ten times as many apps come from?

Andy explains why developers choose to build for Nextcloud and how to decide between a classic PHP app and an ExApp that runs in a container and can be written in any language. He also talks about why reaching for private APIs should start a conversation with Developer Relations, and why a test system, not production, is the place to explore the OCS API.

We discuss how the App Store now flags apps that look unmaintained, how others can adopt them, and how AI coding agents can help keep older apps alive, as long as the code is still understood, reviewed, and tested. Finally, Andy shares how Nextcloud supports new developers through tutorials, forums, planned office hours, app clinics, and the ISV Partner Program, and where he hopes the ecosystem will be a year from now.

Have an idea for a Nextcloud app? Don’t wait. Start with the developer tutorials and the developer manual, or bring your questions to the developer forum. If you want to bring your Nextcloud app to market, have a look at the ISV Partner Program.

I think that’s one of the big motivators: You want to build something for yourself or also for others that respects privacy, that gives you sovereignty.

Andy Scherzinger

VP of Engineering at Nextcloud

Episode links

• Nextcloud app development tutorials
• Nextcloud developer documentation
• ExApp development documentation
• OCS API Viewer app
• Mind Map app
• Nextcloud help forum
• Nextcloud developer forum
• Nextcloud ISV Partner Program
• Nextcloud Community Conference 2026