Lagos has two kinds of residents.
The first kind lives here full time — has made the move, surrendered the UK property or the Stockholm apartment or the Paris studio, and is genuinely, permanently here. They know which bakery opens earliest and which café has the best terrace in November.
The second kind is something more interesting: the seasonal resident. Six months here, six months somewhere else. Possibly a UK property still. Possibly a mortgage that requires occasional proximity to a London office. In Lagos from May to October, in Edinburgh or Amsterdam or Lyon from November to April, with a flat here that stands empty in winter and a Mac that sometimes does things while the owner is not present.
This is, increasingly, a Lagos story. The town has become a destination for exactly this kind of carefully arranged life — enough sun, enough infrastructure, enough other people doing the same thing to make it feel sensible rather than eccentric.
And it creates, practically speaking, a specific set of Mac problems.
The Scenario
You are in London. Your Mac is in Lagos. Something is wrong with it — you have tried to access it remotely and it is not responding, or a neighbour has been in touch to say the internet appears to be down, or you received a notification that your iCloud backup has not completed in three weeks.
You need someone in Lagos who knows what they are doing to go to your apartment, assess the situation, and resolve it. Someone who has a key, or to whom you would trust a key. Someone you know.
How This Works in Practice
Several of my longer-term clients have chosen to give me a spare key. This is not a service I advertise — it is something that has evolved naturally from relationships built over years. They know me. I know their setup. I know which Mac they have, which router, where the external backup drive lives, what the WiFi password is, and what "it is making a funny noise" means in context.
When something goes wrong while they are away, they call or message. I go to the apartment. I assess and fix. I report back. They return to a working setup.
This is not unusual for a trusted local professional. Your plumber might have a key. Your cleaner certainly does. The question is whether the person who maintains your Mac is someone you know well enough and trust enough to add to that list — and that, in turn, is a question of time and relationship.
Remote Access — The Partial Solution
For many Mac problems, physical presence is not required. Apple Remote Desktop and various screen-sharing tools allow me to connect to a client's Mac remotely, diagnose and fix problems, update software, and check that everything is running correctly — without being in the same room, or the same country.
For this to work, the Mac needs to be on and connected to the internet. If it is not — if it has rebooted unexpectedly, or the internet is genuinely down, or there is a hardware problem — remote access does not help. That is where the key comes in.
The practical setup for seasonal residents who want peace of mind:
- Remote management enabled on your Mac — I can check and configure this
- Time Machine backup running — so if anything goes wrong, everything is recoverable
- Find My enabled — so the Mac's location is always known
- A trusted contact in Lagos — ideally someone who can physically attend if needed
The Lagos Expat Network
One of the things I have noticed in five-plus years of supporting the Lagos expat community is how much practical knowledge circulates informally. Who to call for a plumber. Which electrician actually shows up. Which doctor speaks English. Which restaurant is still good in November when the tourists have gone.
I am part of that network. When a new expat arrives in Lagos and asks who to call for their Mac, they are usually given my number by someone who has been here longer. This is, in my experience, how trust is built — not through advertising, but through other people's direct experience.
If you are a seasonal resident of Lagos and you want someone in your corner when things go wrong while you are away: that is a conversation worth having before you leave for the winter.
Seasonal resident? Mac needs looking after while you are away?
Let us talk about what you need and how to set things up so that your Mac is properly managed whether you are here or not. Remote support, local backup, and — for those who want it — a trusted presence in Lagos when you cannot be. Call or message.
Get in touch →Lagos is an excellent place to be from, in the nicest possible sense. The town looks after its own. So does MacLagos.