How to save The Sims 4 while frozen

Picture this: You’ve been building a virtual dream house from scratch in The Sims 4 or have been fine-tuning your new Sim’s appearance in CAS, and things have ground to a halt and you’re unable to do anything at all.

If this has happened to you in The Sims 4 (we’d assume it has if you’ve found yourself on this page) and are at a loss for what to do, worry not, because there’s a handy solution that can help you save your progress if your game has frozen.

Saving your game while it’s frozen on Mac & PC

• To save when after a freeze, you’ll want to press ALT + F4 to save your progress. For Mac users, you’ll need to press command + Q key for the save prompt to appear.
  • Generally, in other games, this would close the game straight away, but here, you’ll get prompt asking you if you’d like to save your game.
•  Once you’ve done that, a small popup window will appear, as shown in the screenshot below:

EA / Dexerto

• Once this pop-up window appears, all you need to do is select ‘Save and Exit’.
  • The next time you load into your game, your save file should still be updated, just like normal.

What could be causing game crashes in The Sims 4?

If your game is constantly freezing or crashing, and you’re a modder, (if you’re not as of yet, we’ve got a list of must-have Sims 4 mods to check out) the main thing we’d suggest is making sure you’ve installed them all correctly and they’re up to date, too.

This is because a lot of mods need to be updated every patch. If you’ve yet to do that and they’re outdated, chances are you that could run into some game-breaking issues.

If that doesn’t alleviate it and if you’re not a modder, you can also try repairing your game by heading to the EA App.

How to repair your game

• To do this, head into your EA App and click on ‘The Sims 4’ under ‘Installled games’
• Next, click ‘Manage’, and select ‘Repair’, as shown in the image below:

EA / Dexerto

• Then, simply follow the on-screen instructions and your game will be repaired in no time!
• If you’re a Steam user, you can ‘Verify Integrity’, which is located by right-clicking the title in your library, heading to ‘Properties’ and selecting it under the ‘Installed Files’ tab.

One way to be extra safe with your save files is to create a backup for them. You can do this by copying the saves folder located inside the Electronic Arts folder (typically ‘Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves’) and storing it somewhere safe on your computer in case you need them.

Now you’re up to date on saving your game while it’s frozen in The Sims 4, make sure to check out our picks for the best Expansion Packs in The Sims 4, or our guides directory for the game.