Nextcloud has released version 15 of their software. The update brings the Social app – a distributed, federated social network app using the Activity Pub federation standard. What’s improved is the security of Nextcloud servers with updates to the two-factor authentication, making its use more secure by enabling system administrators to enforce its use.

“Security continues to be a key concern to Nextcloud customers”, said Roeland Douma, head of the Nextcloud Security team. “While our leading security bug bounty program provides a great degree of confidence in our ability to continuously write secure, quality code, introducing new security technologies and tightening existing restrictions are a key part of our strategy.”

With the Social app, it becomes easier for users to share thoughts on an activity feed and subscribe to the feeds of others, thus allowing organizations to build an enterprise social network to improve internal social cohesion and communication.

Nextcloud servers can join the fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers communicating through the Activity Pub standard. This includes Mastodon servers, the popular open source twitter competitor, letting users on Nextcloud and Mastodon share and discuss ideas.

The update also includes extensive work with Collabora Productivity, improving the design and integration of Collabora Online in Nextcloud. This brings a new sidebar which allows audio/video calls, sharing and commenting during edit sessions and integrates Nextcloud versions as document revisions.

Nextcloud 15 also features design improvements to the toolbars, HiDPI support and thumbnail rendering. These improvements will become available as releases of the respective apps are made over the coming weeks.