Thumbnails regenerate with every session

This has been happening in my game for a while now, not sure when I noticed it.  It started when I still used mods/cc and all my saves at the time were modded.  Changing outfits and looking at relationships are particularly frustrating.

I've since ditched the mods and cc completely and have started several new completely vanilla saves and it occurs in them too.  In fact, every time I start the game and click on load game it takes a good minute or two to generate my list of saves.

[Tested on a fresh The Sims 4 folder, new save, no mods installed]

Basically, Sims’ thumbnails are not retained across game sessions in The Sims 4. Every time I start a new game session, all thumbnails must reload. This is extremely frustrating because I often have to wait for them to appear just to know where to click, creating delays and disrupting gameplay.

Whether it’s the family portrait when hovering over a household, framed photos when selecting a lot, portraits in the live mode panel, or thumbnails in clothing change menus — the game reloads every single one at the start of each session. This results in a poor and frustrating player experience.

Sorry, crinrict​ , I’m not sure which tag to use for the base game. Would it be BG?

No, base game doesn't have a tag. Please refer to the sticky posts for proper tagging.

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Also merged this with an existing thread.

I first started noticing this problem with the thumbnails regenerating every time I launch the game a few months ago, and it’s not just me, it happens to every YouTuber I follow as well. Each new session feels like déjà vu: I have to sit there and wait for all the thumbnails to reload just so I can figure out where to click. Sometimes it takes several minutes, which completely breaks the flow of gameplay and turns what should be a quick session into a waiting game.

It’s honestly become a huge bottleneck in the overall experience. The game feels slower and more frustrating to navigate, especially when I’m trying to switch between Sims or households. What’s even worse is that the loading process often causes noticeable lag spikes — the moment I enter a household, the Sim selector menu struggles to load all the thumbnails, and the performance drops until everything finally appears.

It might sound like a small thing, but over time it’s incredibly annoying and really impacts how enjoyable the game feels. I just wish the thumbnails could stay cached between sessions so we wouldn’t have to deal with this constant reloading every single time we play.

I've noticed this problem for a while now. Sims' photos keep reloading. It wasn't like that before. And the game sometimes lags because of this constant reloading!

Every time I play The Sims 4, the Sims’ thumbnails have to reload. They reload in several different places, such as when hovering over a house, clicking on a house, in the relationships panel, the live mode menu, outfit changes, and many other areas. I’ve seen some people comment that they have to wait for the images to load just to know where to click, and that’s exactly how it is for me too, it’s turned into a waiting game just to figure out where to click. It’s ANNOYING.

Every time you restart the game and enter CAS, the clothing thumbnails from the Carnival Streetwear Kit and the free holiday pack always regenerate. 

Oh yeah, it's so annoying, I have to wait several seconds to load all the outifits I choose for my sims.