If you’re trying to install your game to an external drive you may have issues if you’re running macOS 10.15 Catalina or later. Here are quick steps on how to successfully install your game to an external drive:
1. In System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy click on Full Disk Access and add Origin if necessary.
2. Whilst in the Privacy tab make sure Origin is showing in Files and Folders
3. Open Origin and go to Preferences > Installs & Saves > Game Library Location and click on Change Folder
4. On the left menu click on Computer then double click on the ‘/‘ that appears next to a picture of your hard drive. You should see four folders – Applications, Library, System, Users
5. In the field at the bottom, where it says Directory, type in /Volumes/[the name of your external] then hit Enter/Return or click Choose.For example, my external is called Backup so the file path is /Volumes/Backup 
6. The window will disappear and reappear again but you may not see your external. That’s ok, quit Origin then reopen it. You should get a Gatekeeper message popping up asking for permission to access files on a removable volume. Just click Ok
7. Now repeat steps 3 to 5 and you should see the contents of your external in the window
Bluebellflora 
External Drive not showing in Origin on Thanksgiving Day!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Its not working…..
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Thank you, I have been racking my brain trying to figure this out! It turned out that I was missing the first part (Volumes) of the path. Duh! This was super helpful. Much appreciated!
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I type in Volumes/My\ External/ but it says directory not found. I’m so confused please help! I did the sym link and everything correctly it’s just this issue.
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Thank you so much! I always play The Sims on Mac and it was driving me crazy. Super helpful
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Thank you! I followed all the steps but I didn’t get the Gatekeeper prompt at the end. When I try to download the sims on to the folder it fails because it says it doesn’t have permission. What should I do?
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System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access
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I followed the steps and already created a symlink successfully but the application still doesn’t appear on my drive. Do I have to delete it and reinstall it? Or am I not moving it correctly? Origin does have full disk access and it does show up under my Files and Folders. My external drive’s name is USB so I am typing /Volumes/USB is this not correct? Any help would be appreciated I just want to clear up some storage on my mac. Thanks for all the help so far with your posts!
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Creating a symlink is for storing the Electronic Arts or Sims 4 folder externally, the folder that contains user data such as saves etc. It is not for storing the game application externally.
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I followed all of the steps, but whenever I change the game library location to my external hard drive in Origin, it just says “The settings have changed. The installation directory for your new games has changed. This won’t affect your currently installed games, they’ll remain in their original location.” Am I doing something wrong? How do I make it so that the game can move to the external hard drive?
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You have to move the installed game to the external drive or re-dwonload it.
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Awesome, I reinstalled the game and it saved onto the drive! Thank you so much!
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Hi i did all the steps and i have origin setup to open from my external drive but im not getting the the gatekeeper message nor is my game opening at all. Did i miss a step or ?
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Yeah, the same thing is happening to me
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I did everything, I also deleted and reinstalled the sims 4 but when downloading the packs it says its not able to download it to /Volumes/usb/The Sims 4 Packs/EP04/ResourceClient.cfg_DiP_STAGED. (my hard drive is named usb) and i typed in exactly what you said to type in. Is there anything i can do to fix this?
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https://bluebellflora.com/2020/06/02/dip_staged-error-when-trying-to-update-the-sims-4/
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