You have landed in Lagos. The light hit you first — that particular Atlantic gold that does not exist in the same way anywhere north of Lisbon. The apartment is everything the photos suggested. You have located the nearest café. Life is beginning.
Your Mac, meanwhile, is still set to the timezone of wherever you came from, backing up to a router that cannot cope, with a keyboard layout that is about to cause you significant frustration the first time you try to type an email address, and notifications arriving at three in the morning because your Mac has not been told that you have emigrated.
I have helped a considerable number of expats set up properly in Lagos. The ones who call me on day one have a pleasant first week. The ones who call me after a month of puzzling behaviour — usually on a Thursday, usually urgently — have a more interesting story to tell.
Here are the five things to do before the first Sagres.
1. Sort the Timezone — Obviously, But Also Properly
System Settings → General → Date & Time → Set time zone automatically using current location. This sounds trivial until your calendar invites are an hour wrong, your emails are timestamped incorrectly, and your Mac is loudly notifying you of things at 2am because it is still living in British Summer Time. Portugal uses WET in winter (UTC+0) and WEST in summer (UTC+1). Notably, this is the same as the UK in winter — but not the same as the UK in summer, when the UK moves to BST (UTC+1) and Portugal stays at WEST (UTC+1). They arrive at the same place by different routes, and this causes considerable confusion in the autumn.
2. Fix the Keyboard Layout — Before It Drives You Mad
If you bought your Mac in the UK, it has a UK keyboard layout. If you are now using a Portuguese keyboard — common in rental apartments with a desktop setup, or if you bought locally — the @ symbol, the quotation marks, and several other characters will be in completely the wrong place. System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. Add your preferred layout. This takes two minutes and prevents approximately forty minutes of frustration every time you try to log into anything.
3. Check What iCloud Is Doing — Before the Bill Arrives
iCloud is almost certainly running. What it is doing varies enormously. It may be uploading your entire photo library — which, if you have fifteen years of photos, could take several days on a modest connection and consume a frankly alarming amount of your data allowance. System Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud. Look at what is turned on. Make deliberate decisions. Desktop & Documents Folders syncing is the one that catches most people — it silently moves everything on your desktop to iCloud, which is wonderful until the internet is slow and your files are not available.
4. Set Up Time Machine — Now, Before You Have Anything to Lose
Time Machine is Apple's backup system. It requires an external drive. External drives cost between €40 and €80. The cost of not having a backup is considerably higher — not financially, necessarily, but in the particular quality of anguish that comes from realising that three years of documents, photos, and work exist only in memory.
Buy the drive. Plug it in. System Settings → General → Time Machine → Add Backup Disk. Done. Time Machine runs in the background and you never think about it again until the day you are extraordinarily grateful it exists.
5. Tell Your Mac Where the Printer Is — Or Accept That It Will Never Find It Alone
If you have a printer — or if the apartment has one, or if you plan to print anything in the next six months — add it now while you are thinking about it. System Settings → Printers & Scanners. If the printer is on the same WiFi, your Mac will usually find it automatically. If it does not, the printer's IP address is in its own settings menu, and you can add it manually. This is the kind of thing that is completely straightforward when you are calm and patient, and completely maddening when you need to print something immediately.
Just arrived in Lagos? Mac needs setting up properly?
I do this for new arrivals regularly — timezone, keyboard, iCloud, Time Machine, printer, the lot. Usually takes about an hour. You arrive in Lagos and your Mac works properly from day one. Call or message and we will sort it.
Get in touch →Lagos is a very good place to start over. Your Mac should be part of that — set up correctly, running well, and causing you no additional stress whatsoever. You have enough to think about. The sardines, for instance.