After being out for more than a decade and dropping a few dozen DLC packs along the way, The Sims 4 is a fairly complex game. And if you play with mods, that complexity ramps up very quickly–which creates some consequences. The more mods you add, the slower and less stable the overall game will become. And if you’ve also loaded up your worlds with hundreds of Sims that you downloaded from the Gallery, things can get messy pretty fast–think long load times and Sims constantly getting stuck.
It’s the sort of mess that a lot of long-time Sims 4 players have to deal with regularly–there are folks out there who have downloaded thousands of pieces of custom content over the years, and The Sims 4 does not load all that stuff very quickly. But don’t worry–since this is not a new problem, we’ve got some well-established solutions you can try to get your game running better.
One quick and easy solution is clearing the game’s cache–the place it temporarily stores images and other data for easy recall. While clearing the cache will mostly benefit mod users, it can also help if your worlds are overly full of Sims and complex homes that you’ve built or downloaded from the Gallery.
Clearing The Sims 4’s cache
One common problem that Sims players have is that the game’s cache is prone to getting jammed up by mod use. Over time, as you update each of your mods and continue playing, the cache files aren’t great at keeping track of those changes. With mods installed, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually end up with a tangle of data that slows down your game in a big way.
Clearing the cache on PC or Mac is very easy, as it simply involves deleting two files. First, navigate to Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4. Once you’re there, you’ll delete two files: localthumbcache.package and avatarcache.package.
There’s also another cache file in this folder, localsimtexturecache.package, that was first added with the Businesses & Hobbies expansion back in the spring. Since it’s still very new, we don’t really know if deleting it will help, but an EA community manager has confirmed it’s safe to get rid of it if you want to try that too.
Repairing your installation in the EA App
Sometimes, you might delete something you shouldn’t, or files may get corrupted during an update, and that can cause problems or outright prevent The Sims 4 from working. You can use the EA App’s repair function to fix that sort of problem if clearing the cache doesn’t help. You simply need to open the Sims 4 page on the EA App, click on the “Manage” button, and then click on “Repair” in the dropdown menu. The app will then manually make sure all the files related to the base game and any DLC you have are actually present, and will replace anything that’s missing or corrupted.
Clearing the cache on console
If you play The Sims 4 on Xbox or PlayStation, clearing the cache is even easier than it is on PC. Just turn your system all the way off–not rest mode–and then unplug it for 60 seconds. This clears the cache for the entire system.
