When did this happen? It must have been over the last few weeks as it hasn’t been that long since I played around with changing game library location to an external drive for some random testing purpose. For the last few years changing the game library location in Origin to an external drive has been a painful experience thanks to Volumes not properly showing in the chooser window:
Now it looks like a proper macOS window and no need to jump through hoops to get the external drive to show up:
(If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, have a look at this guide from November 2020)
I don’t remember seeing the option to change Install location once clicking on Download and choosing which Packs to install, is that new or maybe I’m just too weary when it comes to Origin:
This is a great fix and a long time coming 🙂
Bluebellflora 
Hey thank you for this update!
I actually had my game installed on a hard drive for my mac using your previous guide! I ran into an issue where my game kept saying it was running when it wasn’t. I changed the alias file name and the ea file name in my hard drive but now none of my saves show up, what did I do wrong? Do you have any tips? Please and thank you
LikeLike
Hi, thanks for this instruction. I successfully changed the downloading path to my external hard drive, but when I start download the game the “The Sims 4 Packs” folder still appears on my desktop not in my external hard drive. I have double checked the application setting there is nothing wrong. Can you help me with it? Looking forward to hearing from you.
LikeLike
That can’t happen if the base game installs on the external. Is it a duplicate folder from a previous install?
LikeLike
hi, i have just purchased a new external hard drive. i uninstalled the game and reinstalled it on the
LikeLike
HI, i have just purchased a new hard drive. wiped my mac clean and installed the game on the new drive. it installed successfully as the sims app in now on the hard drive but there is no EA folder and game will not open. everytime i try to open it, it comes up with this message:
Cannot start because game data is missing or damaged. If you have Mods installed please remove them and try again. If not, please repair or reinstall the game via Origin.
[de4ee14f:29f00e76:00000000:4b0d852b]
i have installed, reinstalled, uninstalled, repaired and everything suggested but still not working. could you please help?
LikeLike