Best mods in The Sims 4 (2024): Gameplay, realism, CAS & how to download

If you’re finding the need to inject some new gameplay or CAS capabilities into The Sims 4 to expand your Sim’s virtual worlds even further, the modding community has an overwhelming amount of mods to pick from.

The fourth iteration of The Sims franchise is now a decade old, with more content on offer than ever before to delve into. But if you’re tiring of toying around with cheats for your Werewolves or have already reached the top of the chain in the Life & Death Expansion Pack’s Reaper career, mods are here to save the day.

Below, you’ll find a breakdown of the best ones you’ll want to add to your game in 2024, and details on downloading them.

Must-have gameplay mods in The Sims 4

Expanded Mermaids

With the release of the Island Living Expansion Pack, many Simmers were excited to be able to become a mermaid with the introduction of the fan-favorite Occult. Despite this, the gameplay included for mermaids is incredible, well, shallow.

SpinningPlumbobs has expanded what the life state can now do, from adding the ability to dive for and consume kelp, sleep below the surface of the ocean, or dive down to the deep depths of the ocean at higher fitness skill levels to return with rare fish and “interesting items”.

The mod also introduces Kelpies and Sea Witches, bestowing the Sim with unique interactions and powerful spells.

Fanart Maps

This map menu mod adds a painterly look to many of the game’s different neighborhood maps and can add a new lease of life to the game – especially if you’ve been playing as long as I have!

With plenty available to download, from Willow Creek through to Evergreen Harbor, and a remastered map for Newcrest, you’re able to pick and choose which ones you want to have in your game. It’s worth noting that there aren’t maps for all of TS4’s worlds, but the most recent one is for Mt. Komorebi.

PlantSim Lives

If you’re a fan of the PlantSim scenario in The Sims 4 or want to bring back a little more of that nostalgia from the likes of The Sims 2, SrslySims has everything you need right in one mod.

While PlantSims are a thing in The Sims 4 (and are part of the Base Game, in fact!) your Sims can only temporarily remain in this state and will eventually turn back into a regular ole Sim. With this mod, however, your Sims can live out their green-fingered days for as long as they live. You’re also free to choose whichever hair you like (previously, only one green style could be used with the default version of this occult).

Including new interactions like ‘Complain About Aphids’ and ‘Go on a Nature Walk’ alongside new food, drinks, and tattoos in CAS to show off your planty style with — this mod is essential if you’re a fan of occult life states.

SimDa Dating App

Fancy injecting some more modern-day dating into your Sims’ lives? Look no further than the SimDa Dating App by LittleMsSam. With options to pick for a specific date, a blind date, and optional add-ons such as new aspiration goals and holiday traditions, this mod is great for adding even more storytelling opportunities for you to craft your Sim’s story.

MC Command Center

Arguably one of the most well-known mods for The Sims 4 (and for good reason), Deaderpool’s MC Command Center allows in-depth control over many aspects of different functionalities.

From simple things such as removing the need to type in the game’s ever-expanding list of cheats, to giving you an easy way to make money, add skill points, or tweak relationships, you can do it all. Fine-tune populations, limit those horrendous situational outfits NPCs spawn with, or even give NPCs a makeover – this mod is a must-have for any player.

It even brings in a form of story progression, allowing non-played Sims to get married or even have children without needing to play them yourself, and also can move homeless Sims into empty lots.

With extra optional modules that you can download to add precisely what it is you want to your game without all of the fluff, there’s something for everyone.

Playable Pets

Want to take control of any pets within your household? This free gameplay mod for The Sims 4 lets you do just that! With Playable Pets, you can tell your Sim pets where to go and what to do!

While pet Sims don’t have as many interactions as their Human and occult counterparts, there are still enough options here to make this mod essential for anyone who has pets in their household.

Best UI mod in The Sims 4

UI Cheats Extension

Tired of having to manually enter cheats each and every time you open up the game? Modder Weerbesu has got you covered with the UI Cheats Extension.

With over 25 new clickable elements within the game’s UI, you can quickly rectify your Sims’ needs, add money, remove traits, and more, to get right back into play without needing to spend time typing things into the cheat bar.

Mods for realism in The Sims 4

Slice of Life

Want to give your Sims some more personality to make them more unique? Slice of Life includes 16 personalities based on Myers-Briggs that affect the day-to-day life of your Sims, including elements such as their hobbies and overall moodlets.

Slice of Life not only does this, but with packs such as ‘My Phone Pack’, ‘My Health Pack’, and ‘My Beauty Pack’ which add elements such as a makeup skill and wearable perfume or cologne, this free mod truly takes The Sims 4 to the ultimate next level.

Meaningful Stories

This free gameplay mod by roBurky completely revamps the mood and emotion system that’s present at default in The Sims 4. Aiming to help your Sims “feel more human”, the mod brings in more subtle changes to the emotions, making it so that Sims aren’t able to flip-flop between emotions without experiencing what’s in between those emotions, too.

Meaningful Stories is perfect for players who appreciate a slightly more challenging system to work with. Now, Sims are also no longer ‘happy’ by default – making it so that events such as gaining a new partner contribute more fully towards this emotional state.

Their moods are also now much less predictable, but these moods are, in turn, more consistent. Moodlets received can also vary in strength, adding the need to react more closely to what’s going on instead of being able to fix a negative moodlet in a flash.

Complete Cooking Overhaul

Srsly Sims has seriously shaken up the gameplay loop of cooking within The Sims 4 with Complete Cooking Overhaul, to make it more immersive. You’ll have to shop for groceries, including all of the items already in-game alongside brand new ones, from tasty ramen to Poptarts. You can even display your items in retail stores!

Recipes have been overhauled to require a more realistic amount of a particular ingredient, and foods that were previously unable to be cooked at home, such as Pizza or experimental recipes, are now fair game for your Sims to whip up. The gorgeous array of custom recipes will have your stomach grumbling away in no time, too.

Store fruit in bowls, place the bread into bread bins, and even limit inventory sharing between different storage items. This mod truly breathes new life into the gameplay and is a perfect addition to any Simmer’s world.

Road to Romance

Looking to inject a little more love into your Sims’ lives? Look no further than the Road to Romance mod. Bringing in a brand new skill, Romance, along with a new mood, Affectionate, this mod shakes up the way that love works. Initially, they’ll struggle with their romantic relationships as they slowly progress through the skill, also impacting the moodlets that they can receive.

From brand new interactions that are earned as you progress through this new skill, your Sims will become total schmoozers as they unlock new interactions such as ‘Charm the Room’ and the ability to tell others that they love them.

You can also take your Sims to couples’ counseling and online dates! Road to Romance is the perfect mod for any storyteller.

Best CAS mods for The Sims 4

More Columns in CAS

Are you a custom content hoarder, do you have all of the packs or both? Spend too long scrolling down an infinite list of clothing and hair to find what you’re looking for?

Weerbesu’s ‘More Columns in CAS’ mod expands the default columns into either three, four, or five, depending upon your preference.

Stand Still in CAS

Many of the animations Sims tend to do in CAS for The Sims 4 can be incredibly frustrating, and these two mods that were previously out of date from Shimrod101 and Shooksims have been updated by MizoreYukii over on ModTheSims.

There are a total of three versions to choose from, with the first two featuring different CAS poses, so pick the one you prefer most. The third mod only tweaks and removes the annoying Occult life state animations that are present.

Old School CAS Room

Fans of older Sims titles will remember the room that featured in games like The Sims Bustin’ Out or The Sims 2 and 3. While the fourth and first iterations of the game feature a plain, colored background, the other titles had a physical room where you’d create your Sims.

This mod aims to bring back that nostalgic feature to the game. With different options to choose from regarding the room’s wall and door colors, you can minimally customize this backdrop to your liking.

Luumia CAS Overhaul

Any long-term Sims fan will know that Luumia has been an essential modder in The Sims 4 community, providing skin overrides, lighting overhauls, and currently missing features like body hair.

This mod aims to improve CAS from a visual perspective. It adds a soft backlight around your Sims and a lighting overhaul that aims to give “Sims and Pets a sense of depth”.

There’s also a whole range of different backgrounds for CAS itself, from pastel and gradient pinks through to a chroma blue or green that’s useful for editing photos.

CAS Lighting – City Light

Create a Sim can be a fantastic place to capture a stunning headshot of your favorite Sim, but there are a few lighting mods that can help take them to the next level without the need for much post-processing. SimplyAnjuta has a couple of lighting mods available, but their ‘City Light’ variant has to be one of my favorites.

Casting a soft glow of red and purple around your Sim, this mod will allow you to create dazzling shots that your Sim would be proud to have placed on display around their home.

The Sims 4 best mods for Build/Buy

Better BuildBuy

Ever wanted to search for items by color? Or be able to have the game’s hidden debug items enabled to appear in the catalog? Better BuildBuy has got you covered. The most obvious addition is expanding the number of items you can see in the catalog at any one time, but there’s lots more.

You can show or hide both Maxis and custom content, tweak lighting colors as you can in Live Mode, and use filters that break down each individual kit or display Live Edit items (items that are seen throughout the game’s worlds).

OMSP Shelf

Perfect for those that are looking to clutter up their homes, this mod by Picture Amobae lets you place a ‘shelf’ that can be moved around to help you clutter up anything that’s against a wall – from kitchen counters to shelves, or even fridges!

The shelf also sticks out from any item that you place it on while in Build/Buy, making it a lot easier to move around. You can then make the ‘shelf’ invisible so that it looks just as if you’ve placed all these items directly on whatever surface you’ve chosen.

Photographic Memory Photo Spawner

If you’re looking to add a more personal touch to your Sims’ homes, this is the mod for you. While photos taken by your Sims can be hung around your home with frames already – Ravasheen’s mod spawns frameless versions of already existing photos (either from your inventory or those that are in-world).

Once you place them in Live mode or Build/Buy, you can then decide on and further customize whether you’d like them to have strips of tape or push pins to secure them in place. As an added bonus, there’s also a mod for the corkboard shown in the image above to let you hang them in style.

Shiftable Mirrors

Despite being an incredibly simple idea, mirrors aren’t able to be moved up and down walls like paintings are. Picture Amobae’s mod rectifies this, allowing you to freely place the mirrors where you see fit.

You can choose from a merged package that enables the function of every mirror across all packs, or download them separately if you don’t own them all.

TOOL

Want complete control over things outside of your lot in The Sims 4? TOOL can do just that. Standing for Takes Object Off Lot, this mod by TwistedMexi gives builders complete freedom to mold their vision for lots even further.

With the option to rotate, size up, size down, elevate, and move objects around on and off of your current lot, this mod is an absolute dream for builders who are looking for that extra bit of control to truly bring their vision or a story to life. You can even replace apartment windows with completely new ones!

What’s more, if you’re using Better BuildBuy above, you can also use this in build mode, instead of being restricted to using it in Live Mode without it.

How to download & install The Sims 4 mods

Before shopping for the best mods in The Sims 4, you’ll need to know how to add them to your game. Luckily, downloading and installing mods is a much easier process than in the past:

Downloading mods

Downloading mods for The Sims 4 is a relatively simple process. For the most part — and in the case of the mods on this list — all you’ll need to do is select the ‘download’ button, file name, or equivalent on each particular download page. Some will be through sites like CurseForge and Patreon, while others will be through Sim File Share or a creator’s own site.

Players can also download mods from the official hub for The Sims 4 over on CurseForge. According to the site, it’s a “secure and curated space for the highest quality mods and CC”. Many well-known content creators’ mods can already be found there too, including MC Command Center and the SimDa Dating App.

Locating your Sims 4 mods folder (PC & Mac)

Once you’ve downloaded the mods you’d like to use in The Sims 4, you’ll first need to locate your Mods folder. This can typically be found under ‘DocumentsElectronic ArtsThe Sims 4Mods‘.

After locating that, you’ll just need to move the files across to the correct folder:

• Locate the folder that you’ve saved the mods you’ve downloaded to.
• If the file ends in ‘.package‘, or ‘.ts4script‘, simply move it into the ‘Mods‘ folder.
• Some files you download will be in a Zip file. Extract this by right-clicking, and place the extracted contents into the ‘Mods‘ folder.
• Some zips may contain images and text documents that provide further details on the mod. These do not need to be placed in the folder.
• That’s it! Your mods are installed.

Following installation, you’ll then need to enable mods in-game.

Enabling mods

Mods won’t work straight off of the bat in The Sims 4 unless you’ve signified to the game that you want them to appear:

• Once you’ve launched the game, select the ‘…’ icon from either the main menu or the top right of the screen when in-game.
• Click ‘Game Options‘.
• You’ll see an ‘Other’ tab on the left side of the window that pops up. Click that.
• Make sure that both ‘Enable Custom Content and Mods‘ and ‘Script Mods Allowed‘ are checked.
• Press ‘Apply Changes‘ and then restart your game.

Any mods that you’ve now downloaded should be working. If you want to check what mods the game recognizes that you’ve installed, select ‘View Custom Content‘ once you’ve restarted to see what appears.

Are mods available on console?

Unfortunately no, mods aren’t available on console platforms. Though unlikely at this stage of the game’s lifecycle, if this ever changes, we’ll be sure to update you here with the necessary steps.

Now you know which mods are the cream of the crop, for more guides on all things The Sims 4, check out how to become a ghost, how to make money fast, all the Life & Death Expansion cheats, and the proper way to unlock all items.