# Configuring Federation Sharing Federated Cloud Sharing is now managed by the Federation app (9.0+), and is now called Federation sharing. When you enable the Federation app you can easily and securely link file shares between Nextcloud servers, in effect creating a cloud of Nextclouds. ## Creating a new Federation Share Follow these steps to create a new Federation share between two Nextcloud servers. This requires no action by the user on the remote server; all it takes is a few steps on the originating server. 1. Enable the Federation app. 2. Go to your Nextcloud Admin page and scroll to the Sharing section. Verify that **Allow users on this server to send shares to other servers** and **Allow users on this server to receive shares from other servers** are enabled. 3. Now go to the Federation section. The Federation app supports creating a list of trusted Nextcloud servers, which allows the trusted servers to exchange user directories and auto-complete the names of external users when you create shares. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/federation-0.png) 4. Now go to your Files page and select a folder to share. Click the share icon, and then enter the username and URL of the user on the remote Nextcloud server. In this example, that is `freda@https://example.com/nextcloud`. When Nextcloud verifies the link, it displays it with the **(remote)** label. Click on this label to establish the link. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/federation-2.png) 5. When the link is successfully completed, you have a single share option, and that is **can edit**. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/federation-3.png) You may disconnect the share at any time by clicking the trash can icon. ## Configuring trusted Nextcloud servers You may create a list of trusted Nextcloud servers for Federation sharing. This allows your linked Nextcloud servers to share user directories, and to auto-fill user names in share dialogs. You may also enter Nextcloud server URLs in the **Add Nextcloud Server** field. A red light means the connection failed. The yellow light indicates a successful connection, with no user names exchanged. The green light indicates a successful connection with user names exchanged. The prerequisiste for a green status is that the trusted servers were maintained in both interacting Nextcloud servers. Additionally `occ federation:sync-addressbooks` must have been executed (part of cron job list). The delay to execute the cron is based on local configuration of the cron frequency. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/federation-1.png) ## Creating Federation Shares via public Link Share Check the `Share link` entry to expose more sharing options (which are described more fully in [File Sharing](/link/951)). You may create a Federation share by allowing Nextcloud to create a public link for you, and then email it to the person you want to create the share with. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/Ns8create-public-share-6.png) You may optionally set a password and expiration date on it. When your recipient receives your email they must click the link, or copy it to a Web browser. They will see a page displaying a thumbnail of the file, with a button to **Add to your Nextcloud**. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/OV5create-public-share-8.png) Your recipient should click the **Add to your Nextcloud** button. On the next screen your recipient needs to enter the URL to their Nextcloud server, and then press the return key. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/Isxcreate-public-share-9.png) Your recipient has to take one more step, and that is to confirm creating the federated cloud share link by clicking the **Accept** button. ![](https://docs.cocobook.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-10/create-public-share-10.png) Un-check the `Share link` checkbox to disable any federated cloud share created this way. ## Configuration tips The Sharing section on your Admin page allows you to control how your users manage federated cloud shares: - Check `Enforce password protection` to require passwords on link shares. - Check `Set default expiration date` to require an expiration date on link shares. - Check `Allow public uploads` to allow two-way file sharing. - If you encounter timeouts for downloading or uploading large files, you can use the option `davstorage.request_timeout` in your `config.php` to increase the timeout. The default value is 30 seconds. Your Apache Web server must have `mod_rewrite` enabled, and you must have `trusted_domains` correctly configured in `config.php` to allow external connections (see [Installation wizard](/link/898)). Consider also enabling SSL to encrypt all traffic between your servers . Your Nextcloud server creates the share link from the URL that you used to log into the server, so make sure that you log into your server using a URL that is accessible to your users. For example, if you log in via its LAN IP address, such as `http://192.168.10.50`, then your share URL will be something like `http://192.168.10.50/nextcloud/index.php/s/jWfCfTVztGlWTJe`, which is not accessible outside of your LAN. This also applies to using the server name; for access outside of your LAN you need to use a fully-qualified domain name such as `http://myserver.example.com`, rather than `http://myserver`. ## Changing the display of federated shares By default, federated shares are displayed in a separate section in the Nextcloud interface. It is possible to change this behavior and display them in the same section as internal shares. This can be controlled with a `occ` command: ``` bash occ config:app:set --value false --type boolean files_sharing show_federated_shares_as_internal ``` Set the value to `true` to display federated shares mixed with internal shares, or `false` to keep them in a separate section (default).