Sabre/dav - CalDAV and CardDAV server, alternative to Radicale.

[jdaviescoates]

@christiaan said in Sabre/dav - CalDAV and CardDAV server, alternative to Radicale.:

Is Sabre/Baikal the same thing??

Yes, Baikal is sabre with a an admin ui

"Baïkal is powered by sabre/dav, while offering an administrative interface for easy management."

From https://sabre.io/baikal/

[foliovision]

It sounds to me that if Sabre/dav is to be added, Cloudron should add the full Sabre/dav | Baikal stack with GUI. We are using Fruux (who are the main users/sponsors of Sabre/dav | Baikal) and have been having all kinds of issues with syncing of CardDAV. CalDAV has been quite a bit better for us (production quality) but with complaints from the team of occasional issues.

Part of the issue is Apple's deliberate sabotaging of CardDAV/CalDAV to drive users to iCloud. We are never going to use iCloud (sharing our calendars directly with the NSA/CIA/FBI).

Even if it's not the fault of Fruux/Baikal developers, we still need working MacOS and iOS sync. This means we are looking for a CalDAV/CardDAV stack which programs defensively for iOS and MacOS. I'm going to ask NextCloud users again about reliability of NextCloud with Apple devices.

If Sabre/dav | Baikal won't work any better than Fruux, I'd vote against adding this stack as I know it doesn't sync reliably.

[fbartels]

@foliovision said in Sabre/dav - CalDAV and CardDAV server, alternative to Radicale.:

I'm going to ask NextCloud users again about reliability of NextCloud with Apple devices.

Nextcloud is also just using Sabredav under the hood, so the probability of it working differently are slim.

[d19dotca]

@foliovision said in Sabre/dav - CalDAV and CardDAV server, alternative to Radicale.:

we are looking for a CalDAV/CardDAV stack which programs defensively for iOS and MacOS

As a macOS and iOS user myself, that is why I suggested this CalDAV/CardDAV stack (Sabre/dav) because from my readings at least (at the time I suggested this) it seemed to be the most compatible and complete DAV solution. The current Radicale stack states explicitly that it does not intend to support the full RFC for CalDAV and CardDAV and wants to remain as "simple" as possible, which unfortunately causes issues for those who need some extra features like calendar sharing and better support for more devices / apps. If you're aware of others that are better, please add them to the App Wishlist.

[necrevistonnezr]

@foliovision said in Sabre/dav - CalDAV and CardDAV server, alternative to Radicale.:

I'm going to ask NextCloud users again about reliability of NextCloud with Apple devices.

Works fine here without hiccups.

[ruihildt]

I would definitely welcome a solution which is working without Nextcloud, especially as Cubby matures.

[christiaan]

@foliovision said in Sabre/dav - CalDAV and CardDAV server, alternative to Radicale.:

I'm going to ask NextCloud users again about reliability of NextCloud with Apple devices.

I tried Radicale and ran into problems. Went back to using Nextcloud which we find very reliable, apart from this alert badge in Calendar on Macs. The thing is it doesn't seem to actually affect anything. Everything works as expected despite this message.

The server responded with an error.
The request for account “beehive.archi” failed.

The server responded with
“501”
to operation CalDAVUpdateShareesQueuableOperation.
Try Again | OK

[christiaan]

@foliovision actually I do seem to need to click on the alert I'm getting and click OK to get it to sync properly.

[timconsidine]

An extremely old thread, but here goes.

My Radicale instance broke, tried to fix it, but realised that I never liked it much anyway. So looked at alternatives and found Baikal.

Now packaged and released as a Community App.
In your AppStore,

Enter when prompted : https://communityapps.appx.uk/cloudron-baikal/CloudronVersions.json

Brief info at https://communityapps.appx.uk

[ @James @community-apps ]

[joseph]

@timconsidine https://communityapps.appx.uk/cloudron-baikal/media/screenshot.png seems to be a broken link

[timconsidine]

@Joseph apologies - fixed

[foliovision]

NextCloud did (mostly) work on our iPhones. Mostly refers to unreliable sync between users, groups and devices. Sync via NextCloud worked most of the time but was quite confusing without good defaults. At a personal level, it was okay but I'd hate to count on it working across dozens or hundreds of users. I wouldn't trust a NextCloud hooked-up device not to share personal contacts with the server either.

In 2025, we gave up on Apple mobile devices (iPhones) due to ever increasing invasiveness of iCloud and lack of security (iCloud data shared with all the three letter agencies) over time. We moved to LineageOS and GrapheneOS and in worst case de-Googled Android (the latter I do not recommend as it's a time-sink: to cut off Google functionality will degrade, the LineageOS guys work thousands of hours to de-Google Android, better to enjoy their hard work).

Hard to believe that in 2026 only Apple, Microsoft and Google have reasonably functional contact sharing!

If somebody at Cloudron has some better ideas on how to share contacts in a SMB please let the world know.

[timconsidine]

@foliovision said:

If somebody at Cloudron has some better ideas on how to share contacts in a SMB please let the world know.

did you look at the contacts app here ?
or explore Baikal CardDav ?
I have not yet - I don't generally use contacts app.

[nebulon]

For very similar reasons out of frustration to not being able to fix basic contacts syncing issues and improve those apps, we have been building a contacts app for Cloudron from scratch with some decent UI but more importantly a carddav server which we can fix for all use-cases we can test. It is still pretty fresh project, but works well at least with thunderbird, davx/davdroid, gnome.

@foliovision if you like, give it a go and if you hit syncing issues just open a thread at https://forum.cloudron.io/category/221/contacts any other feedback or bugreports are of course very welcome to get this going.

The project lives at https://git.cloudron.io/apps/contacts

[foliovision]

@timconsidine said:

did you look at the contacts app here ?
or explore Baikal CardDav ?
I have not yet - I don't generally use contacts app.

Yes, I've tried all of them, including sponsoring etesync/tasn for two and a half years and paying for Fruux for many years. I finally got fed up when Tom refused to add support for Apple Silicon Macs (etesync requires that Rosetta 2, about 2GB of RAM, run at all times).

etesync only syncs two users though so it's of limited use in a group or even family setting.

@nebulon

Your contacts project sounds very exciting. We'll definitely try it.

[ruihildt]

I think I tried Baikal, bubut the multiuser and shared calendar story was lacking. So back to Nextcloud for this, unfortunately.

[nebulon]

@ruihildt if you want, you can test drive the new Calendar app, it does have calendar sharing already, but is still under heavy development. Early feedback is very welcome though

[ruihildt]

@nebulon Yes please!

[nebulon]

@ruihildt so we didn't announce that yet but it is already in the normal app library published as unstable for testing. It is just called "Calendar"

[LoudLemur]

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