Time for some testing: Beta 1 of Nextcloud 16 is here!

Yesterday we made available the first beta of Nextcloud 16, which marks our feature freeze! This release will, as always, bring a lot of improvements. And we are of course looking for help: finding and fixing bugs, finishing a lot of polishing and updating apps so they are ready when the release comes out. It is weekend and the Northern Hemisphere is wintery, so stay inside and do some testing!

As always, we want to make sure that upgrades are smooth as well as, of course, day to day usage. There is still a fair bit of polishing to do as well so we’re looking for all feedback we can get.

Feature freeze?

Winter is coming! In all seriousness, ‘feature freeze’ means that we will no longer add new features, just improve and stabilize the release further. This is the stage in our development at which we release our first beta and begin to focus on polishing and bug fixing. The perfect time to get involved and help us make this release awesome!

What’s new

We can’t yet reveal what is new, but you can see for yourself by installing the beta of course. And we can use your help, we have our automated tests and it has gotten some basic smoke testing but no test scheme can replace the myriad of ways you all use Nextcloud, on NAS devices to big iron servers!

Besides testing, your help is also welcome in polishing. Small UI improvements, fixes to details – and of course bugfixes! If you are new to Nextcloud, you’re more than welcome to get involved – simply join us on github or check out this page on our website. Note that translations are very welcome too! Now is the time to translate and make sure 16 is ready for as big a number of users as possible. We have millions of users and they don’t all read English!

If you are on the beta channel, we will make beta 16 available soon, stay tuned!