Many people upgrade their phones annually or every two years. Some people upgrade less frequently, but the point is that you probably had an old phone lying around that you didn’t know what to do with. While there are a lot of great projects you can use for your phone, Nextcloud is one that I personally found very interesting. It basically lets you turn an old phone into a NAS, but in a more robust way than just remotely accessing it and copying files back and forth.
This guide requires your phone to be rooted, but if you have an older phone, it’s probably possible. I’m using a OnePlus 11, which is easy to unlock and root, but most smartphones should be similar. As a side note, this guide also launches a Pi-Hole server that you can use on your phone.
How to set up Nextcloud on your old phone
We use Pi deploy
Pi-deploy is a fork of Linux Deploy and is designed to deploy a Raspbian instance with Pi-hole on your smartphone. However, in an update, the developer Also has also added a script to install Nextcloud Pi. Nextcloud Pi is just like Nextcloud, except it comes with a full server instance and management system for your Nextcloud instance. It often lags behind updates from official Nextcloud builds, but that really isn’t too much of a problem for the average user.
You can download Pi-deploy from GitHub and give it root access so that it can download and start a virtualized Raspbian environment. Once Raspbian is up and running (deployment can take up to 15 minutes), you can SSH (via Termux, an SSH client, or from another device on the same network) and run pideploy-nextcloud-install to download and install Nextcloud. Your SSH password will be displayed during the Raspbian boot process, so be sure to write it down. It will only be displayed once.
Once installed, you can navigate to nextcloudpi.local in your phone’s browser and you’ll be taken to the configuration page for Nextcloud. Save the credentials you receive and then use those details to log into the administrator account. You can then create a new user with a new username and password to access it on other devices from the primary administrator account.
Once you’ve got everything set up, you can sync your laptop, PC, or phone with your new Nextcloud server running on your smartphone. It works just like you’d expect a NAS to, allowing you to back up your files and copy them across your network. You’re limited by your phone’s storage, but that’s usually the case with projects like these. For simple backups, it’s fine, and it’s a project that lets you learn more about networking and Linux. Plus, it’s pretty cool to have a smartphone as a central server in your home for syncing!
What you learn here can teach you how to work with a real NAS. There are real operating systems that are actually designed for this kind of thing if you want to build your own NAS or buy one. It’s a fun project, but never rely on it as the only backup provider for your important files!
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