how can I transfer sims 4 from my macbook to an external hard drive?

@Bluebellflora I've followed the instructions and everything worked until I relaunched Origin to check if it sent me the popup thingie, and it didn't😭 I changed the USB permissions to everyone can read and write and I also went into system preferences to give Origin full access of my thing, restarted my laptop and tried again and it still didn't work ☹️( I'm so sorry to hassle you with this but please help me😭😭😭

@1nternetgrl

What is the "popup thingie" and "my thing"? Please be really clear when providing info for technical issues 🙂

Can you post a screenshot showing your Origin games library location, a screenshot of the Full Disk Access in Origin, and a screenshot of the contents of your external drive showing the game installed there.

@1nternetgrl

Thanks. That isn't the game in the screenshot showing the contents of the external drive. That is Electronic Arts > Sims 4 folder that contains all your saves etc. Have you created the symlink for that?

Are you getting a Download option in Origin for the game?

@Bluebellflora

Hi so.........basically I messed around a bit and completely broke my entire game. It's a loonggg story, but I deleted the sims application and reinstalled it onto the drive. It worked until I realised I had wiped the USB drive in order to make space for the application so I now had no EA folder. I tried to reverse the symlink but obviously I need the EA folder to reverse it which is nonexistent so I couldn't. Luckily I had backed up my mods and cc and my save files, so I deleted the alias folder and started a repair on the sims. All was going well, it created a new EA folder and somehow un-symlinked itself so it was on the main drive. I could launch the sims off the USB drive successfully, I just had no packs. I continued my repair, until I realised that it was actually installing a new sims application in a new folder that my macbook had created in /Volumes that was named USB. I tried reverting it back to the USB drive but that didn't work, so right now I am just letting Origin do it's thing and create a new Sims application with my packs so I can symlink the EA folder back to my USB drive. Do you have any advice? Thank you so much😭

@1nternetgrl Clarifying that now I have 2 sims games, one on my main macbook and one on my USB drive, my EA folder is on my main macbook, and I have no packs, but all my mods and cc and my saves.

@1nternetgrl

If you have problems reversing the symlink because the Electronic Arts folder is no longer there you can simply create a folder manually. The symlink is just looking for a specifically named folder, it doesn't care what is in the folder.

If Origin is still showing /Volumes/USB as the game library location you could trash the game installed locally on your Mac and hopefully you will still get the Play button in Origin which means it can see and load the game from the external.

@1nternetgrl

Make sure Origin is closed when you do that!

@1nternetgrl

All completely fine 🙂 DLC is installed in the folder called The Sims 4 Packs and this folder must be in the same install location as the base game otherwise Origin can't see it so re-downloads it all again - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/The-Sims-4-macOS-Notarization-FAQ/td-p/8876253