ownCloud Administrators Manual

Installing and Managing Apps

After installing ownCloud, you may provide added functionality by installing applications.

Viewing Enabled Apps

During the ownCloud installation, some apps are enabled by default. To see which apps are enabled:

  1. Click Apps in the Apps Selection Menu.

    The apps available for use with ownCloud appear in the Apps Information Field.

    ../_images/oc_admin_app_page.png

    Administrator application page

  2. Scroll down the Apps Information Field to view the enabled apps.

    Apps that are enabled appear at he top of the list of apps.

Managing Apps

In the Apps page, you can enable or disable applications. If an app is already enabled, it appears highlighted in the list. In addition, enabled apps appear at the top of the app list in the Apps Information Field. In contrast, disabled apps appear below any enabled apps in the list and are not highlighted. Some apps have some configurable options on the Apps page, but mainly they are enabled or disabled here, and they are configured on your ownCloud Admin page.

Adding Third Party Apps

Some apps are developed and supported by ownCloud directly, while other apps are created by third parties and either included in or available for your ownCloud server installation. Any apps that are not developed by ownCloud show a 3rd party designation. Install unsupported apps at your own risk.

Sometimes the installation of a third-party app fails silently, possibly because 'appcodechecker' => true, is enabled in config.php. When appcodechecker is enabled it checks if third-party apps are using the private API, rather than the public API. If they are then they will not be installed.

To understand what an application does, you can click the app name to view a description of the app and any of the app settings in the Application View field. Clicking the Enable button will enable the app. If the app is a third party app, it will be downloaded from the app store, installed and enabled.

Though ownCloud provides many apps in the server installation, you can view more in the ownCloud apps store.

To view or install apps from the ownCloud apps store:

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the Apps Information Field.

  2. Click More apps.

    The ownCloud apps store launches.

  3. Read about any of the apps in the ownCloud app store and download any that you like.

4. Extract a downloaded compressed file and place the contents (which should themselves be contained in a folder with the app name) in the apps folder in your ownCloud installation, typically owncloud/apps.

5. Ensure the permissions and ownership are similar to the other ownCloud apps. Typically, access rights are rwxr-x—, or 0750 in octal notation, and the owner and group are your HTTP user. On CentOS this is apache, Ubuntu is www-data, and on openSUSE is it wwwrun:www.

Note

If you would like to create or add your own ownCloud app, please use the Add your App... button on the same page. This button redirects you to our Developer Center where you can find information about creating and adding your own apps.

Setting App Parameters

Most app parameters are configured on your Admin page, and some are set in config/config.php. Always try your Admin page first.

Using Custom App Directories

Use the apps_paths array in config.php to set any custom apps directory locations. The key path defines the absolute file system path to the app folder. The key url defines the HTTP web path to that folder, starting at the ownCloud web root. The key writable indicates if a user can install apps in that folder.

Note

To ensure that the default /apps/ folder only contains apps shipped with ownCloud, follow this example to setup an /apps2/ folder which will be used to store all other apps.

<?php

  "apps_paths" => array (
      0 => array (
              "path"     => OC::$SERVERROOT."/apps",
              "url"      => "/apps",
              "writable" => false,
      ),
      1 => array (
              "path"     => OC::$SERVERROOT."/apps2",
              "url"      => "/apps2",
              "writable" => true,
      ),
  ),

Using Your Own Appstore

You can enable the installation of apps from your own apps store. This requires that you can write to at least one of the configured apps directories.

To enable installation from your own apps store:

  1. Set the appstoreenabled parameter to “true”.

    This parameter is used to enable your apps store in ownCloud.

  2. Set the appstoreurl to the URL of your ownCloud apps store.

    This parameter is used to set the http path to the ownCloud apps store. The appstore server must use OCS.

<?php

  "appstoreenabled" => true,
  "appstoreurl" => "http://api.apps.owncloud.com/v1",