Automated backups from Signal to Nextcloud

DON’T DO THIS: the Signal app has the ability to make daily backups of your messages, and when you choose a folder to backup into, you can choose “Nextcloud” as the device, then choose a Nextcloud folder to back up to.

Don’t do that.

Although the above worked for me for a long time, a few weeks ago, Signal started making 0-byte files for all my backups, and merrily deleting the old ones.

Instead, choose a normal folder on your phone and ask Signal to back up to there.

Then open the Nextcloud app, go to Settings, Auto-uploads, and add a custom folder to auto-upload. For Local Folder, choose the folder you just told Signal to back up into, and for the Remote Folder choose somewhere in Nextcloud to store your backups.

Nextcloud will automatically notice whenever a new backup file appears and copy it to your server.