Disk permissions loop in EA App on Mac with APFS external drive

Hi, I’m looking for help because I’m stuck in a disk permissions loop on macOS and EA support hasn’t been able to fix it.

I’m using the EA App on Mac with an external WD Elements drive. The drive was previously NTFS, but I have successfully reformatted it to APFS using Disk Utility (GUID Partition Map). The drive now mounts correctly and I can manually read/write files to it in Finder with no issues.

What I’ve already tried:

• Gave EA app Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security
• Quit and relaunched the EA App
• Restarted my Mac
• Confirmed the external drive is APFS and not read-only
• Verified the drive appears normally in Disk Utility and Finder

Despite this, the EA App still says it needs disk permissions and will not install or manage Sims 4 add-ons on the external drive.

Has anyone run into this issue where:

• The external drive is already formatted correctly (APFS)
• Full Disk Access is enabled
• But the EA App still doesn’t recognize the permissions?

Any help or advanced troubleshooting steps would be appreciated.