Newbie question about saving Sims

Hi, the question is a bit intricate, but I can tell you how I do it.
When I just want to create a Sim, I select New Game and automatically I am in CAS, at which point I create the sim and then to save it I click the top right button (the one with the folder and arrow) and it is saved in the Library (which I can only see, as it is not shared in the Gallery). At that point I can exit CAS without saving the game, because the Sim remains saved in the Library. The next time I restart the game I can choose New Game again and recall the Sim in CAS, or select an existing game, open the Library, and place the Sim in any lot worth at most $20000.

I hope I could help you 😊

The library is yours and the gallery is where others share their creations with other players. Your Households are where they are always available, whether in the library or not. Other Households is for Townies/NPCs. But there is a recommendation for the maximum size of your Households and you may choose to move Sims over to Other Households to make room by using the options on each household image in Manage Households. I do this often. It won't affect the Library copy. It means they become Townies and keep their skills and relationships. Other Households can be subject to culls where Sims are deleted but I regularly delete random Sims added by the game and keep the number below 100. I've not lost anyone I've created out of Other Households.

When you create your sim you will see the option to save them to your library if you want to. I don't always do that. It means that if you lose your Sim their basic self will be saved but any life experience aren't added to the library copy, unless you save them there again later. Sometimes that adds their skills, etc but not always and family links in a household may need to be re established.

So as an example. I lost my entire game but I had library copies of many of my Sims. I'd saved their full and completed households to my library and I still had the basic original Sims too so I had various options to add them back to my world. I had saved their houses to my library too. All I had to do was link them to their family members in CAS again, place their houses again and put them back. By using the households I'd saved with all their skills, etc. It meant they were good to go. If I'd added the original Sim I'd saved at creation they'd have had no skills, etc.

I then had a problem with my library and had to clear it all, so when I lost my game again last year I had to create all my Sims again from scratch.

I haven't saved to the gallery to share with others, I've been planning to but not done it yet. But I have downloaded others creations.

I'm on Xbox Series S and when I've switched to a new Xbox and logged in with my username I've been able to access anything I'd saved to my library.

Hope this helps!

If you don’t want to upload your sims for public, you can just copy/upload your Tray folder (Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4). There are your saved sims/households (local). I generally don’t share my sims for public but have a backup from all my sims/houses on my USB-stick + extern cloud service. // of course, if you create a new sim + save this sim in your library you need to make a new backup.

I play on both my desktop and my laptop, and... this might be overkill for most users, but...

I use SyncThing. (If I include a link, will they edit it as being "commercial"? it's free and open source!) Basically, I have it synchronizing my entire Sims 4 folder between the two machines (with a few exceptions, notably cache and ini files).

Again, this is almost certainly overkill, but... your Sims, your saves, your builds, your mods... they're all saved as files. Anything that synchronizes the files between the two machines should work; I mainly use SyncThing because it's free and doesn't leave my home network. You could instead copy files to and from the cloud service of your choice at the beginning and end of all play sessions (which is what I used to do).