Sims 4 repeatedly stuck on infinite loading screens on M4 MacBook Air

Platform

• MacBook Air M4
• 16 GB RAM
• macOS Sequoia 15.5
• EA App
• Latest version of The Sims 4

Installed Expansions

• Seasons
• Cottage Living
• Cats & Dogs
• Growing Together
• Life & Death
• Businesses & Hobbies

Issue

After a brand-new installation of The Sims 4 and six expansion packs, the game has multiple loading and world-transition issues.

Problems observed

1. Create-a-Pet
• Creating a cat and clicking the checkmark results in an infinite loading screen.
• The green plumbob continues spinning and gameplay tips continue changing indefinitely.
2. Manage Worlds
• Selecting Manage Worlds frequently results in the same infinite loading screen.
3. Travel
• Many community lots (parks, vet clinic, and other public venues) cannot be entered.
• Clicking them often does nothing or the game hangs on an infinite loading screen.
• Residential lots are more likely to load.
4. Cats & Dogs
• Brindleton Bay is available.
• I was eventually able to adopt a cat through gameplay, so the expansion appears to be installed correctly.
• The issue appears to be with world transitions/loading rather than ownership of the expansion.

Troubleshooting already completed

• Brand-new MacBook Air M4
• Fresh installation of The Sims 4
• No mods or custom content
• EA App Repair completed
• Restarted Mac
• Created a completely new Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 folder
• All expansion packs show as installed
• Issue still occurs

Would love a fix as soon as possible since I just spent a bunch of money on this game that now doesn’t function properly. 

Thank you. 

Kenziethezebra​ 

Can you pinpoint when this started happening? Was it after an OS update or game update? After adding specific Mods? 

Kenziethezebra wrote:

A different macOS user profile

What did you set up in the new user account? For example Siri, iCloud, Diagnostics etc, everything you are prompted for during the setup process.

Kenziethezebra wrote:

macOS Safe Mode

Never do this, it disables Metal libraries that the game depends on.

Kenziethezebra wrote:

Adjusted Privacy & Security permissions and restarted

What were your settings and what did you adjust them to?

Kenziethezebra wrote:

Running Apple Diagnostics

Which specific Diagnostics tool, how did you do this? What were the results?

Bluebellflora​ 

Thank you for responding!

I first noticed the issue after installing **bleep** (around mid-July), but it only happened occasionally, and I was always able to get back into the save. About a week ago, I also installed Basemental Drugs, and that's when the issue escalated to nearly every loading screen and wouldn't let me back into the saves that had crashed.

However, I've since completely removed all mods and custom content, uninstalled and reinstalled the game, and tested a newly generated clean folder with a brand-new save, but the same issue still occurs in that completely vanilla game, even when all packs are deactivated.

I believe I was playing the game without issue after the most recent Sims 4 update, but I don't remember for certain. The problem was already occurring on macOS 15.7.7, and I later updated to macOS 26.6 in an attempt to resolve it.

Regarding the separate macOS user account, I skipped the steps for accessibility, signing in to an Apple Account (so there's no iCloud sharing), screen time settings, Apple Intelligence, Siri, and Touch ID. I wasn't prompted for anything else, and left the account's default settings unchanged. I didn't transfer any Sims files into that account. I only launched the game there and let it create a completely new Sims 4 folder and save.

Thank you for letting me know about Safe Mode. I won't do that again.

Regarding Privacy & Security, I had reached out to EA in their live chat for help with this issue, and one of the troubleshooting tasks they gave me was to manually allow full disk access to both the Sims 4 app and the EA app (I believe it had previously only been allowed to the Sims 4). That's the only privacy setting I changed.

For diagnostics, I started Apple Diagnostics on the Mac and ran the available hardware checks. The logic board and memory checks both passed, as did display, sensors, software, and Wi-Fi.

Please let me know if you need any other information, and thank you so much for your help!

Bluebellflora​ Sorry, I think it automatically censored the first mod I mentioned lol. It was 'WW' by TURBODRIVER, if that helps.

Kenziethezebra​ 

Ok. Can you launch EA App, go offline, then launch the game and try to play. Does it help? If not let's go for the nuclear option:

1. uninstall the game via EA App
2. uninstall EA App and manually remove all traces of it from your Mac 

   https://bluebellflora.com/2024/04/04/ea-app-recovery-for-mac-reset-ea-app-by-clearing-cache-and-other-files-manually/ 

3. empty the Bin, restart your Mac
4. download and install EA App
5. download just TS4 base game
6. switch to the other user account on your Mac, the clean one, and launch the game and try to play

Bluebellflora​ 

Going offline helped a little longer than normal. I was able to switch between manage worlds, build mode, and live mode the first few times I tested, but I still got stuck on the loading screen while traveling.

After doing the second option, I got stuck on the loading screen after CAS when starting the new save.

Kenziethezebra​ 

Any lastCrash or LastExcpetion files generated in the TS4 folder?

I'm stumped. Your game is clean and others on M5 Macs running various versions of Tahoe are able to play so it's really hard to figure out what exactly the is the cause but there are a few similar reports now. It can't be pack related if you only installed the base game during the reinstall. I'm still not discounting that it may be an issue on your Mac but the clean user account should have discounted that, unless it is something specific in Tahoe but again every Mac user running that version would have this problem resulting in an influx in reports.  Do you have any antivirus or end point monitoring software installed that is also running in the new clean user account?

Kenziethezebra wrote:

After doing the second option, I got stuck on the loading screen after CAS when starting the new save.

Enable vsync and see if that gets you past CAS.

Kenziethezebra wrote:

Going offline helped a little longer than normal

You're the second person to report this recently, it's so frustrating. Maybe for now the solution is to go offline and save often, IF you can get past CAS but it makes playing very frustrating.

If you find any other solution that works or mitigates the problem could you report back? 

I have the exact same Mac and exact same issue. Just bought packs with August sale tried completely reinstalling the game and it didn’t fix it. I even used code to make sure it recognized my graphics but still nothing.

637cxtrq4825​ 

So far, for me, what has helped most is playing offline with VSync enabled and autosave disabled during loading screens. I don't know if this solves the problem completely, but it has at least made my game playable for me again, since the issue used to occur at nearly every loading screen. I've also been playing on a clean user account on my Mac, so if the other solutions I mentioned ^ don't help, then you could try doing that all on a different Mac account.