Gallery Stuck In Infinite Connecting Screen

Alright. I tried turning off the vpn, and the gallery started to work again. This also fixed my extremely long initial loading screen as well(which I think was trying to connect to the gallery and took very long to load the game). I don't know why this problem started in the first place when it was all working fine before. I wanna say it's not my vpn and probably something to do with the Sims or EA, but I'm no programmer, so all I can do is guess.

Hiya folks! So I managed to get my mods functioning [it wasn't allowing me to load my household for the longest time--the selectable pet mod was the issue btw]. Now it isn't allowing me to connect to the gallery. 

It will remain loading when I hit the "connect" button and stay that way until I exit the game. I've tried restarting the game, completely closing and rebooting the EA app, deleting the localthumbcache, and nothing seems to be working. 

I've also tried going online and offline through the EA app as well and that doesn't seem to work. The app has also been giving me issues, it won't load my profile panel to the right where I can change my online/offline/invisible status for my profile for some reason. 

Does anyone else have this issue? Any resolutions or ideas to try? Thank you so much in advance! :) 

RESOLVED: 

I'm an idiot. I had my VPN on, that's it, that's why. LOL 😂

following because same issue for me, even with the killswitch error message. started a few days ago. beforte that, it worked fine. just repaired the game.

Game: The Sims 4
Platform: PC (Windows 11)
Account: missHalleslebens
Region/Country: (your country)

Issue:
The Gallery opens and I can see other players’ creations behind the pop-up, but I always get a window saying “Attempting to connect…” that never goes away. The “Connect” button is greyed out and I can only click “Stay Offline”.

In the EA App, on the right-hand side panel I also see “Connection failed – We couldn’t connect you with other people. If the problem persists, please restart the application.” The rest of the EA App works normally: I can see news, the store and my games.

The web Gallery works fine with this same EA account in my browser. The problem only happens inside the game.

Expected result:
The game should connect to the Gallery and let me use all online features without the endless “Attempting to connect…” message.

Actual result:
The Gallery shows creations, but the “Attempting to connect…” pop-up never finishes and I’m considered offline.

Troubleshooting already tried (none of this helped):
- Cleared the EA App cache (including using App Recovery within the EA App).
- Repaired The Sims 4 via EA App.
- Reinstalled the EA App.
- Temporarily disabled Norton 360 (including Smart Firewall and other protections) and made sure EA App and TS4_x64.exe are allowed.
- Checked Windows Firewall and allowed EA App / The Sims 4.
- Reset Windows network settings (netsh winsock reset, ip reset, ipconfig /flushdns, etc.) and restarted the PC.
- Tested with a different Wi-Fi network.
- Deleted localthumbcache.package.
- Removed all Mods and CC (moved the entire Mods and Tray folders out of the Sims 4 folder).
- Renamed the entire “The Sims 4” folder in Documents so that the game created a completely fresh user folder with no saves, no Tray and no Mods, then enabled online features again.

Even with a completely clean Sims 4 user folder and all online options enabled, the Gallery is still stuck on “Attempting to connect…”, and the EA App keeps showing the “Connection failed / couldn’t connect you with other people” message.

Additional info:
- This started recently. A couple of days ago I was able to use the Gallery normally.
- My internet connection is stable and other online games and services work without issues.

Could you please check if there is an issue with my account or with the Gallery / social services for my region? It looks like everything on my PC side is already ruled out.

Im having the same issue and I tried the same fixes! Did you find a solution by chance?