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I have a pack downloaded/installed but it won't let me play
I have the Royalties & Legacy pack downloaded and installed on the EA app however when I launch the game, the world is faded and when I hover over it there is a window that says it's not downloaded or installed and I'll need to relaunch once it is to play. I have tried to uninstall and then reinstall, I've repaired, I've removed mods and everything yet it still won't work. I don't know what else to try.JordanMartian11 hours agoRising Newcomer2Views0likes0CommentsGame crashing or not loading especially after updating? Post here.
If your game is crashing or not launching after recently updating it please try the two most basic and fundamental steps to resolve it before posting: Repair the game in EA App Test a new clean game. Don't just cherry pick a few files and folders you think you should remove, such as just the Mods folder, or a few random Mods, or any old cache file, or a couple of screenshots, test a completely new, clean, vanilla game. Full instructions here - [INSTRUCTIONS] How to troubleshoot and test a broken game | EA Forums - 11864548 If your game successfully launches with a new Sims 4 folder you then need to figure out what is causing the crashing/failure to load. Again, instructions are in this link - [INSTRUCTIONS] How to troubleshoot and test a broken game | EA Forums - 11864548 . Only you can do that and it can take some time. if the cause is Mods head over to the Mods forum for further help - The Sims 4 Mods & Custom Content | EA Forums if the cause is one or more particular save files, upload them to a file sharing site and post the link here (tag me) or PM me and I can test in my game If your game will not load after repairing it AND testing a completely clean Sims 4 folder please uninstall and reinstall the game through EA App then test, still using the clean Sims 4 folder the game created from the previous step. If you're still having an issue post here with the specs of your Mac. You can find these in Apple > About This Mac: model, e.g. M4 MacBook Pro year, e.g. 2024 macOS version, e.g. Sequoia 15.3.2 (yes, the FULL version is important, with all numbers) memory, e.g. 64GB storage available, e.g. 1.5 TB of 2TB. This info can be found in System Settings > General > About or More Info... in the About This Mac window. Please also post a screenshot showing the contents of the new Sims 4 folder in Finder: make sure the files are in list order in Finder with Dates and Size clearly visible. make sure all files and folders in the TS4 folder are showing, don't cut off the screenshot have the path bar clearly showing in the screenshot: with the Finder window open and selected click on View > Show Path Bar in the menu bar at the top of your desktop. The screenshot should look something like this: Make sure to add a full description of what exactly is happening and what you have tried to fix it in your post. Be constructive to help us help you 🙂 The following are a few examples of short replies that are not constructive: "my game won't work" "my game has broken and I hate EA" "my game only works without Mods and I'm refusing to remove my Mods" "fix it" "my sister's friend's brother's aunty has the same computer and her game works" "I've tried EVERYTHING and NOTHING works"14KViews7likes564Comments(Mac) Forever load screen + full screen
Hello, I have a brand new MacBook Air m5 16 RAM so essentially nothing is on it but sims 4 and about 3,000 cc items. The issue I keep having is resuming game and sometimes when I click manage worlds too quickly a forever load happens. Or when I am in CAS for at least two minutes I’ll finish and get a forever load. I tried everything top to bottom, no cc, no mods (I only have 2), new save, removing sims 4 folder, lower graphics and even uninstalling and reinstalling the game. The only thing so far that has been working is windowed screen and I’ve added my build, hair and clothing cc slowly and it’s loading in 10 seconds like it’s supposed to. I’m still slowly adding the rest of my cc. But is this just a bug I have to deal with til it’s fixed? Or is there a solution? Please help!![READ FIRST] Compiled list of Mac specific issues
Installing the game & patching - issues in EA App All issues related to installing and patching the game should be posted in the EA App Tech & Bugs forum. This includes, but is not limited to: base game and/or purchased DLC not showing in games library in EA App DLC not available in-game but showing as installed game not recognising a patch is available installing or patching stuck at a certain % Graphical Issues Infant pillow shadow flickering in CAS - [MAC] Infant pillow flickering in CAS | EA Forums - 12156631 White dots on CC surfaces - Graphics issue with any reflective/shiny surface | EA Forums - 11017402 Game data incomplete or llama thumbnails or red and white sims or bluey/purple/red textures with question marks - Game Data Incomplete, grey llamas, red and white sims, broken textures | EA Forums - 10985476 Game screen flickering - Sims 4 Screen Flickering | EA Forums - 10960786 Game stuck in windowed mode - [WORKAROUND] game window displays Sims 4 title and cannot be changed | EA Forums - 13198706 Game performance OS specific issues: macOS Tahoe cursor freezes and glitches, gets stuck at bottom of the screen. Playing in windowed mode resolves it Mouse Pointer Freezing | EA Forums - 12602264 Model specific issues: Macs with Apple silicon (all M series) game crashing/system restart. Enable VSync [WORKAROUND] game/Mac freezes on Apple silicon Macs | EA Forums - 11043725 Macs with screen camera notch pointer doesn't click where you want it to [WORKAROUND] Pointer clicks off-target on Macs with display camera notch | EA Forums - 11031751 Macs with M1 Pro & M1 Max chips Refresh rate issues [CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 M1 Pro/Max in full screen mode refresh rate problem | EA Forums - 10972318 Macs with M4 chips lag, stuttering, low fps Lagging and stuttering game performance on Macs with M4 chips | EA Forums - 12628907 Launching issues: "There was an error processing the startup configuration script" error message when attempting to launch the game Sims 4 Mac crashes with GraphicsRules.sgr file in the ConfigOverride folder | EA Forums - 12188469 In-game issues: Cursor drift in CAS and in-game phone camera Mouse Shift/Drift problem | EA Forums - 12044704 Camera does not rotate properly Camera will not rotate properly using trackpad or mouse | EA Forums - 10993399 Game is already running error message Unable to start: The Sims 4 is already running - Mac only | EA Forums - 12192886 Saves or Households or Lots or Mods have disappeared [READ FIRST] Saves, CC/Mods or Library items disappeared? iCloud issues | EA Forums - 1097971241KViews9likes1Comment[WORKAROUND] game window displays Sims 4 title and cannot be changed
Hello, yesterday I mirrored my MAC screen to another laptop (my own), since then my sims 4 has been having mouse calibration issues on top of other things. When I go into full screen, the sims 4 title on the top of the window will not go away. This in turn has made it so that my cursor to click onto anything has to be below the object I want to click on, instead of the usual click onto the object to select. I've tried resetting my computer, restoring the game, opening and closing the app/game. Nothing seems to be working. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this issue? I attached an image below to give an example of what my screen looks like. Edit - edited title to better reflect issue and workaround (Bluebellflora)SolvedToybox20003 days agoRising Newcomer676Views0likes22CommentsUnable to start: The Sims 4 is already running - Mac only
If you're experiencing this error message it doesn't mean your game is already running, the actual message itself is incorrect. It means The Sims 4 cannot access the Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder to load your user data when you attempt to launch the game. This is essentially a permissions issue which can be resolved based on your setup: - If you have just installed or reinstalled the game - If you have iCloud Drive enabled and it is syncing your Desktop & Documents folders - If you have recently updated your Mac or the game - If you have moved your Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder to an external drive and created a symlink in your Documents folder ______________________________________________________________ If you have just installed or reinstalled the game: You would have been prompted to allow The Sims 4 permission to access the Documents folder, this is security built into macOS. This is so it can access the Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder in your Documents folder, if one already exists, or create a new one if it doesn't exist. If you clicked Don't Allow when prompted the game cannot read and write to the Documents folder, resulting in the error message. Fix - Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files and Folders (you will need to use an Mac Administrator account to access this) and enable access to the Documents folder by clicking the toggle on: If you do not see this option open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access (you will need to use a Mac Administrator account to access this). Click the + in the bottom left corner, below the list of apps. A Finder window will open to the Applications folder. Navigate to where your game is installed, by default this is Applications > EA Games, click on it and then click Open. It will now be added to the Full Disk Access list. Make sure it is toggled on. Whilst giving the game Full Disk Access isn't ideal, and shouldn't be necessary, it is a quick and easy solution to fixing the error message and the game is signed and notarised by Apple. ______________________________________________________________ If you have iCloud Drive enabled and it is syncing your Desktop & Documents folders: This is a really common cause of this error message and is as a result of your Mac storage being full resulting in iCloud pushing the entire Documents folder to the cloud. The game cannot see the Documents folder and its contents because it is not local on your machine, therefore it cannot access the Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder to load user data at launch. Fix - Open System Settings > Apple Account > iCloud > Drive and disable the Desktop & Documents folders syncing. Be aware of the effect this will have if you use multiple Apple devices to access these folders: ______________________________________________________________ If you have recently updated your Mac or the game: Sometimes permissions can go awry after updating the OS or you have been prompted to change settings after updating and inadvertently clicked the wrong thing. Fix - check all of the applicable settings in the instructions above ______________________________________________________________ If you have moved your Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder to an external drive and created a symlink in your Documents folder: There can be multiple reasons for the error message when a symlink has been set up but they are all caused by the game not being able to access the Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder: your external drive is not plugged in and properly mounted. Check the drive is plugged in and showing in Finder/on your Desktop. your symlink is broken. This can be checked by looking at the symlinked folder in your Documents folder. If the icon is a white file and not a folder it is broken. Trash it and recreate the symlink in Terminal. If you have further issues refer to the dedicated symlink thread opening post. the game does not have access to Removable Volumes (external drives) in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files and Folders. You would have been prompted to give permission when launching the game for the first time after successfully creating the symlink and maybe denied it. Give the game access: you have iCloud Drive syncing your Desktop & Documents folders to the cloud which does not work well with the symlink. Disable it (see above for further instruction). your external drive has not been ejected properly multiple times resulting in the OS changing the mount point. Check Disk Utility and rectify, see the dedicated symlink thread opening post for further instruction. ______________________________________________________________ If you're still stuck a really quick and easy way to resolve this is to create a new Administrator account on your Mac and play the game in that account. When you first launch the game in that account you will be prompted to give all the necessary permissions for the game to access the Documents folder - make sure you allow it 😊11KViews0likes543CommentsGame crashing 2-3 times in one session
I have been playing every night the past week and every night my game has been crashing 2-3 times a night. I updated the game on May 22nd. My game crashes every once in a while but never this much every day. I don't know what any of it means, how can i fix it? I have restarted my laptop, the app and deleted all the files and downloaded them again. I never use CC or Mods.32Views0likes1CommentCrash unknown when loading (location change) macOS MacBook Air m2
Hello, my girlfriend is experience frequent random crash, when she change location sometimes, the loading screen freeze and the game just silently crash. Where can we find the crash log to analyze them please ?Solved29vyv29oroa54 days agoRising Newcomer26Views0likes1CommentPlease fix my game - can't play
Its been saying I cannot play for the past 2 weeks I cannot play cuz it keeps saying you guys my game and it doesnt allow me to play I bought about 80 Euros of packs to than get denied and saying the problem lays with you guys help me fix it [CM edit - descriptive title and CAPS]liefeheerstbeest4 days agoRising Newcomer36Views0likes1CommentPacks unavailable after attempted repair
I was having issues with the game not loading, so I ended up re-downloading it. Seemed to work well at first, and the game plays well now, but none of my packs from before this are available. They say they're still installed, but won't let me uninstall/reinstall them to try to fix it that way. I tried repairing the game, but that didn't do anything either. I purchased a new pack since then, and it works fine, so it seems to be just the earlier ones. Any ideas?Solved54Views0likes3CommentsGame Data Incomplete, grey llamas, red and white sims, broken textures
Hello, I haven't really had any issues with my Sims 4 game before so I haven't used these message boards very much, but I've had a problem show up that I can't seem to find a solution for. I've checked various other posts with a similar problem but none of those fixes helped. I updated the game yesterday and when I went to load my save (right before you choose a world to play), a message popped up that said: Game Data Incomplete Not all game data could be loaded. The save game references neighbourhoods that have been uninstalled or otherwise are no longer available. If you continue playing, you will encounter missing data and may have unexpected results. If you save the game, there will be no way to recover the missing data. What I thought was weird was after updating the game and before starting it, I decided to buy two stuff packs (because 50% off) and installed those. When I was scrolling through all the packs I had, I realized none of them were installed, literally NONE, and I had to go through and re-download every single pack. Once they were all redownloaded, I started the Sims and that's when I saw the error message. After googling for hours trying to fix the problem and I had felt like I exhausted all options, I decided I was just going to go through my save file and save every household and lot I created to my library and then completely start over because I was so fed up. However, when I went into the worlds to start saving lots, I saw all those weird grey llamas. They weren't in every world, only Del Sol Valley, Sulani, and Willow Creek, all the rest (from what I recall) had no llamas. In the worlds with the llamas, all my created lots were gone and only base game lots remained. I have tried to repair the game in Origin (three times now), restarted my computer (twice), uninstalled and reinstalled Origin, moved folders around in my Sims 4 folder (taking out folders one by one to see which one is the issue), and then finally completely removed my Sims 4 folder and placed it on desktop so it would regenerate upon opening again. When I took out my Sims 4 folder, I opened the Sims, started a new game, made a random sim, and when I went to choose a world the llama thumbnails were still there. I play with mods and cc, but removed the folder while trying to fix this issue. I'm not really sure what to do next, I was set on just starting a new save file and restarting, but once I saw that the llamas were still there even after the Sims 4 folder regenerated I feel kind of stuck. If you have any ideas on how to fix please respond! Also sorry if this seems super jumbled and all over the place, I wanted to add as much detail as possible and I'm also typing this at 4:30am LOL. (edit - changed thread title to cover all related issues with this problem, Bluebellflora)Solvedtayphillips117 days agoNot applicable32KViews1like696CommentsEA "play" button resetting
I have been having trouble trying to get into the game for the past 2 hours. Yesterday my game was fine. I tried pushing the play button in the EA app and it greys out normally. It usually takes a while for the actual game loading screen to pop up considering the amount of mods I have, however after I while I noticed that the button was once again blue. I pressed it again and after a while it did the same. I have been going through my mods trying to find out what the possible cause could be, deleted many, redownloaded, but still no luck. I have also tried to open the game through my external drive but am met with the same results. I have also tried repairing the game through the EA app many times. I'm not quite sure what to do from here.ybqb17qwldn08 days agoSeasoned Newcomer58Views0likes3CommentsMac] Frequent Crashes After Installing Enchanted by Nature - No Mods
Frequent Crashes After Installing Enchanted by Nature (No Mods) – Multiple Households/Worlds + CAS Crashes Platform: Mac Game Version: 1.124.63.1220 System: MacBook Pro (Apple M5) 16 GB Unified Memory macOS 26.5.1 No mods or custom content installed. Recently installed: Enchanted by Nature Expansion Pack Dream Home Decorator Game Pack Issue: After installing Enchanted by Nature and Dream Home Decorator, my game began crashing frequently. The crashes occur across multiple households and worlds and are not limited to a single save file. The game closes directly to desktop with no error message. Affected households/worlds: Horse Ranch household/world (owned long before installing the new packs) Enchanted by Nature world Multiple households within the same save Troubleshooting performed: Repaired game through EA App. Deleted localthumbcache.package. No mods or CC installed. Renamed the Sims 4 folder and allowed the game to generate a completely fresh user folder. Tested with a brand-new save. Results: A completely fresh Sims 4 folder significantly improved stability. I was able to play for several hours without crashing. After copying only my saves folder into the new Sims 4 folder, gameplay remained stable for several hours. Crashes eventually returned. Additional information: Crashes were occurring before I edited any Fairy Sims. During some crashes, I had testingcheats true and cas.fulleditmode enabled, although I was not actively using them at the time. More recently, crashes have occurred while editing Fairy NPCs in CAS. The CAS crashes occurred while changing appearance, clothing, and romantic/sexual preferences. The crash happened before I could click the checkmark to confirm changes. The same crash has occurred with multiple Fairy NPCs. Crash information: categoryid: 0x13c0e8c Multiple crash logs show the same category ID. Modded: False Num Save Errors: 0 Num Load Errors: 0 Crash timing: Several crashes occurred after approximately 3–4 minutes of gameplay. Other sessions lasted several hours before crashing. At this point I am unsure whether the issue is related to Enchanted by Nature generally, Fairy Sims specifically, CAS interactions, or another interaction introduced by the recent expansion/update. I am posting in case others are seeing similar crashes and to provide information for investigation.GreyStone82211 days agoRising Newcomer27Views0likes0CommentsMacBook M5 trackpad scrolling jumps in CAS, Gallery, on macOS Tahoe 26.3
MacBook Air M5, 16GB RAM, macOS Tahoe 26.3. Two-finger trackpad scrolling in Sims 4 is extremely jumpy and oversensitive and lags. Occurs in Create-a-Sim, Gallery, and other scrollable menus. Scrolling jumps multiple rows at a time while fingers are moving. Trackpad works normally in macOS and other applications. Repairing the game, resetting the Sims folder, and adjusting trackpad settings did not resolve the issue. Another Mac running macOS Sequoia 15.6.1 does not experience the problem.59Views0likes5CommentsTray files not loading in My Library
Title: Tray files not loading in My Library (Mac) — files valid, Mods works, everything already tested Platform: Mac (macOS) Game install: EA app Mods/CC installed: Yes (no script mods involved in this issue) Problem: Downloaded Sims (households) and lots placed in my Tray folder do NOT appear in the in-game Gallery > My Library. My CC (clothing .package files) in the Mods folder works perfectly and shows up in Create a Sim. Only the Tray content fails to load. What I've already tried (please don't suggest these again): - Confirmed all files are directly in the Tray folder, no subfolders - Confirmed each entry has all its companion files (.trayitem, .householdbinary, .sgi, .bpi, .hhi) — same file count, nothing missing or unpaired - Enabled Custom Content and Mods + Script Mods in Options > Other - Set Gallery > My Library filters to All category, and enabled "include custom content" / show items requiring packs I don't own - Deleted localthumbcache.package - Fully restarted the Mac (not just the game) - Repaired the game through the EA app Mac/iCloud specifics (possibly relevant): - My Documents folder is synced to iCloud Drive. I have two "The Sims 4" folders: one in iCloud Drive > Documents > Electronic Arts, and one local at /Users/daniel/The Sims 4 - I confirmed which folder the game actually uses by renaming both and launching: the game recreated the folder in iCloud, so iCloud is the active one - I moved Mods and Tray into that active iCloud folder. Mods loads fine; Tray still does not - Files are downloaded locally (no iCloud "cloud" icon) Key clue: Sims 4 Tray Importer detects all my Sims correctly from the same active Tray folder — so the files themselves are valid and readable. The game just won't display them in the Library. Question: Given the files are valid (confirmed by Tray Importer) and in the correct active folder, why does the game fail to load Tray content while Mods loads fine? Is this related to the May 2026 update (1.124 / May 21 hotfix) that reportedly broke content? Any Mac/iCloud-specific fix?94Views0likes1Commentpacks not working
okay so I downloaded sims4 through steam on a Samsung windows computer and bought the "get together" pack and got the holiday celebrations which is free. I just got a MacBook and transferred everything over to the Mac but the only problem is both of the packs keep saying "available on windows". I don't have steam on the MacBook since I knew steam doesn't support Mac and Im pretty sure I've done everything you can do lol. I've uninstalled and re-installed sims4, I've checked my ea to make sure I'm logged in correctly, I've repaired the game, I've logged out of EA and I even talked to EA customer support for an hour. is there anything I can do or am I gonna have to start an entire new game?Solvedmezzie_2114 days agoNewcomer71Views0likes3Comments
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