Once your Sims have visited the DMV for a license or bus pass, you can send them exploring just by clicking on them, which brings up a radial wheel of options. This mod from KawaiiStacie adds a bunch of rabbit hole actions-activities your Sims can do on their own without you following-that activate buffs or improve your Sims' relationships with those closest to them. Con – can be a complicated process for less tech.(Image credit: Electronic Arts, Maxis / Modded by KawaiiStacie).Pro – you can install the actual game on the external drive before setting up the symlink, thereby keeping the game and your data all in one place.Pro – Faster read/write speeds if you use a USB-C/Thunderbolt drive and have slow internet.Pro – data automatically stored on the external, no need to manually move files around.Pro – storing your Sims 4 data on a physical external drive you can take anywhere with you.To store your Sims 4 folder, or the entire Electronic Arts folder if you wish, externally you need to create a symbolic link (symlink) on your Mac to store the folders and files on an external device.
Here is a great article explaining how it works in more depth. There is no way round this unless you free up more space on your Mac or store the data externally. Up until that point your Mac has been keeping the files locally as well as in the cloud which is why your game is happily loading all your saved games. If you have been using iCloud Drive to store your Documents folder in the cloud but suddenly the game starts creating new games, this is because your internal storage is very full. If the game cannot locate a Sims 4 folder in that location it will create a new one, resulting in a brand new, clean game when you launch it. The Sims 4 folder contains your saves, tray files (your in-game library), all CC/Mods if you use them, screenshots taken in-game using C, recorded videos, your in-game graphics options, plus a few other files and folders that make your game unique to you.
You have a small internal drive on your Mac, typically 128GB or 256GB.This gets asked a lot on Answers HQ, how do you store your Sims 4 folder on an external drive and your game recognise it as the default location? You may want to do this for various reasons: