🖥️ Nextcloud Desktop Client blueprints

June 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

:blue_book: We decided to use KDE Craft to get all binary dependencies of the Nextcloud files desktop client.

System requirements

Optional recommendations:

Tip

We highly recommend Nextcloud development environment on Docker Compose for testing/bug fixing/development.
▶️ https://juliushaertl.github.io/nextcloud-docker-dev/

How to set up Windows 11 for developemtn

If you don't have Windows as your main system, you could try to run it as a virtual machine.

Set up Microsoft Visual Studio:

  1. Open the Visual Studio Installer.

  2. Click on Modify:

    vs-studio-2022

  3. Select Desktop development with C++:

    vs-studio-dev

Set up KDE Craft

  1. You will need to install Python 3: https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/
  2. Set up KDE Craft as instructed in Setting up Craft.
  3. We recommend to use the default options, including Qt6 (since desktop 3.14, we are using Qt 6).

Important

C:\CraftRoot is the path used by default by KDE Craft on Windows.
On Linux and macOS, CraftRoot is set at the user's home: ~/CraftRoot. In the instructions below we will use <CraftRoot> to be replaced according to your operating system and set up.

How to use the desktop client blueprints

  1. After following the instructions in Setting up Craft.
  2. Open PowerShell on Windows, or any terminal in other systems.
  3. Run craftenv.ps1 as described in the instructions above:
<CraftRoot>\craft\craftenv.ps1
  1. Add the blueprints from this repository:
craft --add-blueprint-repository https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop-client-blueprints.git
  1. Update craft:
$ craft craft
  1. Install all desktop client dependencies:
craft --install-deps nextcloud-client

Compiling the desktop client

Windows

  1. Make sure your environment variable %PATH% has no conflicting information to the environment you will use to compile the client. For instance, if you have installed OpenSSL previously and have added it to %PATH%, the OpenSSL installed might be a different version than what was installed via KDE Craft.
  2. To use the tools installed with Visual Studio, you need the following in your %PATH%: path
  3. Open the Command Prompt (cmd.exe).

Important

The next steps has only been tested and proven to work when using Command Prompt.

  1. Run:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64

Tip

Alternatively you can use the tools installed with KDE Craft by adding them to %PATH% in your current session:

set "PATH=<CraftRoot>\bin;<CraftRoot>\dev-utils\bin;%PATH%"

You also need to set the Qt path for plugins via an environment variable

set "QT_PLUGIN_PATH=<CraftRoot>\bin\plugins"

This will result in using the cmake version downloaded with KDE Craft.

  1. Clone the desktop client repository.
git clone https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop.git
  1. Create the build folder <build-folder>.
mkdir <build-folder>
  1. Go into the build folder.
cd <build-folder>
  1. Run cmake.
cmake <desktop-cloned-repo> -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<CraftRoot> -DBUILD_TESTING=ON -DNEXTCLOUD_DEV=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
  1. Compile the desktop client
cmake --build .

Linux and macOS

After cloning the desktop client code:

  1. Clone the desktop client repository.
git clone https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop.git
  1. Create the build folder <build-folder>.
mkdir <build-folder>
  1. Go into the build folder.
cd <build-folder>
  1. Run cmake.
cmake <desktop-cloned-repo> -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<CraftRoot> -DBUILD_TESTING=ON -DNEXTCLOUD_DEV=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
  1. Compile the desktop client
make install

Tip

In case of seeing this error when running cmake:

The following required packages were not found:
 - libp11

Try the following - it should work for any missing dependency:

  1. Verify that libp11.pc is actually in the CraftRoot folder, usually it is found at <CraftRoot>/lib/pkgconfig.
  2. Check which libp11 cmake is finding by running in the build folder: pkg-config --libs libp11
  3. If it is finding another version of libp11 in your system instead of the CraftRoot one, you can either: 3.1 Remove the second libp11 installed or 3.2 Point cmake to the correct one: export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=<CraftRoot>/lib/pkgconfig

Note

❓ If you have questions about it, you may use the forums at https://help.nextcloud.com to ask them.
🐛 If you find bugs with these steps, you may open a GH issue at https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues.