What you want to know beforehand, answered honestly.

Nothing. nexcanvas is free software under the AGPL-3.0. There is no paid tier, and you don't need an account with anyone, just a computer that runs Docker.

For everyone who wants to sketch something together without leaving their ideas with a service they don't know. A family plans a move, a club plans its party, a small team plans its project, and anyone working alone gets a board that belongs to them. With spaces and rights, every group gets its own place.

German and English. Every further language is a JSON file that the operator uploads under Settings, Server, Languages. They download a template for it in the same place. Whatever is missing from such a file, nexcanvas shows in English.

nexcanvas asks GitHub once a day whether there is a newer version and shows the answer under “About nexcanvas” in the account menu. After an update a notice appears, and under “What's new” nexcanvas explains what has been added and where to find it. How the update itself works is described under Self-host.

Yes, in the browser. Below 640 pixels of width all tools sit in one bar at the bottom, one finger moves the board, two zoom, and a long press opens the menu. You take photos straight with the camera. There is no app from a store, and nexcanvas isn't yet set up to be installed on the home screen.

nexcanvas needs a connection to your server. That doesn't have to be the internet; on your own network, the server in the basement is enough. If the connection drops briefly, the board shows “Offline”, you keep drawing, and your changes follow as soon as it is back.

There is no fixed limit. At the top of the board you see the initials of up to five people who are there right now, and a number for all the others. nexcanvas is built for a family, a club or a small team. We haven't measured how it behaves with very many people at once.

Without its photos a board may grow to 32 MB, which is a great many notes and strokes. Photos and files sit alongside and don't count. A single file may be 50 MB by default, and the operator can lower that.

Yes, but nexcanvas doesn't play them. A video appears as a file card with its name and size, and whoever clicks it downloads it. nexcanvas also takes place and device out of videos.

No, not in nexcanvas. You can move a photo, make it bigger or smaller, turn it and lock it. You have to crop it beforehand.

Not through the interface in this version, and a copy stays in the same space. A way round it is JSON Canvas: save the board as a file and bring it in as a new board in the other space.

Ctrl + Z brings it back, but only your own steps. A deleted board stays in the bin for 30 days. And while someone is working on a board, nexcanvas keeps a snapshot every 30 minutes that you can bring back under Versions.

Yes, through JSON Canvas. A board can be saved as a .canvas file, the way Obsidian writes its canvases, and a canvas from Obsidian comes in as a board. Notes, photos, links, frames and connections go back and forth. What only nexcanvas knows, such as shapes and drawings, waits in a block of its own until the file comes back. More on this under nexlore and JSON Canvas.

The same. nexlore is the note app from the same family and also saves its canvases as JSON Canvas. Both look alike and work in a similar way.

Yes, as PNG or PDF: the whole board, a selection or each scene as its own PDF page. The PDF is made of picture pages, so you can't copy text out of it. For anyone who only needs to look, you can set up a public read-only page with an expiry date and a password if you wish.

On your server, in the /data folder: the database nexcanvas.db with accounts, spaces, boards and their versions, and next to it the photos and files, the logs and the backups. There is no service of ours that anything goes to.

In transit yes, as soon as nexcanvas sits behind a proxy with HTTPS. On the disk, boards and photos are unencrypted, and so are the backups. nexcanvas stores passwords only as an Argon2id check value, and it encrypts the secrets for mail and the sign-in provider with a key of its own. If you want to encrypt the disk, do it at the server.

By default exactly one request a day: the question to GitHub about the newest version, without names, boards or settings. The operator switches it off under “About nexcanvas”. Everything else needs an address that you enter yourself: your mail server for invitations and your sign-in provider. A link card fetches nothing from the linked page, it takes its title from the address.

Only the members of the space a board is in. A space you aren't a member of answers as if it didn't exist. The operator sees the names and managers of all spaces, but not their contents. A public read-only page exists only if the operator allows it and a manager switches it on for a board.

No. The log records what happens, but never the contents of a board, and no passwords, keys or tokens either.

A computer with Docker, for Intel and AMD as well as ARM, so a Raspberry Pi or a NAS will do. nexcanvas runs as one container with a SQLite database, and you don't need a database of your own. For access from outside, a reverse proxy with HTTPS goes in front. How that works is described under Self-host.

No. SQLite doesn't cope with shares over SMB or NFS. Put /data on a disk that is attached directly to the computer.

With its own backups under Settings, Server, Backups. By default one is made every night, and the last seven are kept. A backup is a ZIP with the database, all photos and files and the key. With “Check” you see whether it is complete and what a restore would change. Also put the backups somewhere else, because a folder on the same server is no substitute for a copy off site.

Yes, through OpenID Connect. For authentik there is a button that creates the provider and application itself, and a blueprint file if you want one. Other services you enter with address, client ID and secret.

Yes, a read-only one. Programs such as n8n or a script of your own use a token to fetch the boards, numbers for a dashboard and a small picture of each board. The operator switches it on, and a program can't change anything through it. More under For programs.