Almost lost 50,000 of my girlfriend’s travel photos — so we built a backup app that can move hundreds of GB in one go

It was late at night. My girlfriend’s iPhone was on the table, crammed with tens of thousands of travel photos from all over the world.

She refuses to pay Apple for extra iCloud storage, so everything stayed on her phone. That day, she almost lost it — and with it, years of memories.

I panicked. And then I started looking for a backup tool.

I tried everything:

• Apps that choked halfway.

• Apps that messed up album order.

• Apps that compressed photos.

• Apps that ignored Live Photos entirely.

None of them worked. So we built our own.

My must-have list looked like this:

• Back up tens of thousands in one click — no babysitting progress bars.

• Keep albums exactly as on the phone.

• Keep Live Photos alive.

• Include iCloud-only items.

• Incremental backups so only new stuff is transferred.

• Resume exactly where it stopped.

• Work offline via USB — because the cloud is slooooow.

• Run on both Mac & Windows.

The messy part
We launched early, and then shipped an update that caused a black-screen crash on startup. Many users couldn’t open the app. I was so nervous I didn’t dare open social media — I knew there’d be complaints.

Eventually, I bought a last-minute plane ticket to visit a user in person. We debugged side-by-side in their living room. I left that night with the bug fixed — and a new friend.

When it worked… wow.
The first time we backed up everything, it felt like doing a deep clean of your entire house — and freeing up massive space. No more “Storage Almost Full” popups.

The best part? Users emailed to say:

“Please beat Apple’s monopoly. We’ve struggled for years to download our iCloud photos — your app finally lets us export everything in bulk.”

Now we can move hundreds of GB in a single run — no cloud waits, no restarts, just your library, safe and intact.

Where I need your help:
We’ve solved the tech pain — now I’m stuck on the growth side.
If you’ve built a consumer tool, how did you get your first 1,000 active users?
Would love to hear your stories, wins, and failures.

Builder of iOS App「Albums Backup」https://1shk.cc/AlbumsBackup