IdeaSift

People struggle to keep personal data intact across devices

Individuals moving files, notes, and backups between phones and computers often find that sync is incomplete, conflicting, or too tedious to maintain. Existing tools tend to handle only particular apps or platforms, leaving people to export data manually and verify transfers themselves. A solo developer could address a useful slice of this problem, but not reliably migrate every app’s private data or account state.

For individuals maintaining files and backups across phones and computers. Mentioned from Dec 2015 to Sep 2026 on Bluesky, product forums, GitHub, Hacker News and Stack Exchange.

+

246 different people described this problem in 219 separate discussions.

Week of 2026-07-13: 2Week of 2026-07-20: 1Week of 2026-07-27: 2Week of 2026-08-03: 0Week of 2026-08-10: 3Week of 2026-08-17: 3Week of 2026-08-24: 3Week of 2026-08-31: 0Week of 2026-09-07: 3Week of 2026-09-14: 2Week of 2026-09-21: 4Week of 2026-09-28: 1
24 mentions in the last 12 weeks
Indie fit
3.0/10
Pain
6.0/10
Frequency
10.0/10
Willingness to pay
2.5/10
Momentum
6.9/10
Who pays
Consumers
Competition
High
Build difficulty
Medium

What people said

Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.

  1. I migrated from Pixel 6 to Pixel 8, photos were fine, but for everything else it was badly designed: it did a partial transfer of a handful of file types, leaving a range of documents/PDFs etc unmigrated (in the region of 2Gb of files).
    nmstoker on Hacker NewsOct 2023Has a workaround
  2. I've been using Acronis for a year's subscription which is due to renew, and while it's fine for Windows, the sticking point has been the rather poor coverage of the Android app, backing up only basic stuff like messages and media files
    smithmeister on softwarerecs.stackexchange.comJul 2024Asked for a toolWould payWants to switch
Build brief

See what to build and who will buy it

  • 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
  • 5 places to find your first customers
  • 250 more quotes from people who have this problem
  • Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks