packs will not connect to game with external hard drive

I’m having an issue with The Sims 4 packs not being recognized in-game.

I am playing on a Mac and installed The Sims 4 and all packs onto an external hard drive. In the EA app, all of my packs show as “Installed,” but when I launch the game, they show as “Not Owned” or “Deactivated,” and my saves say they require packs I already own.

Here’s everything I’ve already tried:

• Reinstalled The Sims 4 and all packs multiple times
• Repaired the game through the EA app
• Cleared the EA app cache
• Logged out and back into the EA app
• Ensured I am using the correct EA account
• Made sure the external drive is plugged in before launching
• Launched the game only through the EA app (not from a shortcut)
• Removed old Sims installs from my Mac to avoid conflicts
• Re-linked the install location to my external drive
• Attempted uninstalling and reinstalling individual packs
• Deleted cache files like localthumbcache.package
• Restarted my Mac multiple times

Despite all of this, the issue persists. The EA app recognizes the packs as installed, but the game does not.

I believe this may be an issue with the EA app not properly linking installed packs on an external drive for Mac.

If anyone knows how to fix this please help me, I have been trying to fix this for three days🙏🏻🥺