Category: The Sims 4 on a Mac

External Drive not showing in Origin

Published on by BluebellFlora28 Comments

Edit July 2023 – this issue is now fixed. See this post for the update.

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

17 November patch, what a mess

Published on by BluebellFlora1 Comment

EA released a patch to fix the crashing issue introduced in the 11 November patch and have managed to introduce two new issues for Mac users. We currently have three potentially game breaking issues but thankfully there do appear to be workarounds for them. Please note that whilst these seem to be problems that can affect your game at any time, these threads are very specific to the November patches. Please read the links to see if your issue is one of them:

  1. Game stuck on the loading screen
    1. Link – AHQ thread here
    2. Cause – no idea
    3. Fix – right click on the game in your Origin games library and select Repair game.
  2. World select screen is blank
    1. Link – AHQ thread here
    2. Cause – could be another problem linked to the loading screen issue above.
    3. Fix – right click on the game in your Origin games library and select Repair game.
  3. Freezing and Lag
    1. Link – AHQ thread here
    2. Cause – possibly bloated saves, look in your saves folder. If you have one or more save files that is abnormally large this could be causing the issue.
    3. Fix – no 100% fix yet but try choosing Save as… when saving your game and save as a new file. If the backup saves, ending in .ver2 or a different number, are bloated try moving them to a folder on the desktop and just load the main save file.

Problems with The Sims 4 on Macs with AMD Vega GPUs

Published on by BluebellFlora1 Comment

The September patch seems to be wreaking havoc on Macs with AMD Vega GPUs. Users have reported crashing, glitched graphics and system lockups when trying to play the game. The affected Macs are:

  • 2017 iMac Pro.
  • 2018 15″ MacBook Pros. Not all these models will have Vega GPUs, it was an option at point of sale.
  • 2019 15″ MacBook Pros. This was the last model before Apple changed to 16″ screens. Not all these models will have Vega GPUs, it was an option at point of sale.
  • 2019 21″ iMac 4K. Not all these models will have Vega GPUs, it was an option at point of sale.
  • 2019 27″ iMac 5K. Not all these models will have Vega GPUs, it was an option at point of sale.

You can check to see which GPU your Mac has by clicking on the Apple in the menu bar then About This Mac. For 15″ MacBook Pros click System Report then look in Graphics/Displays you will have an integrated Intel chip and a dedicated AMD GPU.

There are currently three separate threads at Answers HQ which users are posting in:

If you are experiencing this on a Mac with Vega graphics, please head to the relevant thread and click the all important Me Too button in the first post. The more Me Toos, the more likely QA are to look at it.

No concrete workaround yet although lowering your settings to all low does seem to help. Try also switching to the Sims 3 camera if you are using the Sims 4 camera.