0:00 So, if you guys didn't manage to catch my last YouTube video, I explained that the newest update ended up breaking. All of my saves, they are now completely corrupted. All the Sims series that I was doing that I've been doing literally for the last like 2 to 3 years are corrupted. I can't get back into them. They are literally unloadable. I'm pretty sure the corruption came from a mod that I had installed previously. So, I decided to go ahead and restart my Sims 4 folder. And whilst I was doing that, I was also cleaning out all of my CC, obviously going through and updating everything. And I thought it would be a really useful guide. So, I'm going to show you guys how I clean and organize all of my mods and my CC and a bunch of different programs that I use for all of those things. I'm going to show you guys how to install everything. And of course, anything that I mention, all the links for it will be down in the description. So, if you want to go ahead there, but let's go ahead and jump right
0:46 in. So, welcome to my mods folder. Now, hear me out, okay? I am an addict even after the corruption and I still have a juicy 115 GB of CC. Okay, I really really tried my hardest with the whole situation that happened to get down to really minimal mods and CC. And I did really remove everything that I felt like I wasn't using. But if you don't know, I'm actually in the middle of working on a forever save file, which is going to be a save file that I'm going to play in the Sims 4 forever with. So, I wanted like the best most important pieces of CC mod. couldn't get rid of everything. I have nothing to say. Okay, I'm embarrassed. First of all, let's talk about how I organize my mods folder and how I think you guys should organize your mods folder and why I do it that way. Pretty much I organize my entire mods folder based on creator. So, you
1:32 can see I've got them labeled basemental det. These are all the mod creators. And then when you go inside there, all of the individual mods are in here and they are loose. The only things that are a little bit different are my overrides, my creator sim, and my build by. So, you can see my creator sim folder and then from there, creator sim is separated into cast of all ages, animals and pets, any cast mods, presets, seasonal and costumes, skin tones, and sliders. And then if you go into the actual main CC folder, it's all organized by creator. Again, I do this for a very important reason, so just, you know, hear me out in a second. And then my build by folder is organized by creator in there as well. The last one is the overrides folder and this one's a little bit different. Also, you can see that I've got two overrides folders. So, just let
2:19 me explain that in a second. This is my main overrides folder. And if I go ahead and open it, I've got everything labeled by cast defaults, UI mods, tuning overrides, and object and world. And in these, I've also got individual folders as well. Now, there's a really big reason why I do it like this, and it's because in the game, you can't actually have more than one override in the game at once. for example, in my cast defaults and in backgrounds. This is pretty much to stop me from accidentally installing two cast backgrounds and then losing one of them in my folder because obviously you can only have one. So, I labeled everything like this and keep everything super structured so that it's not confusing and I don't accidentally have a second version of the same mod installed. So, everything related to cast goes in here. Backgrounds, columns, lighting, you know, everything. In my UI mods, I've got my CC wrench, any phone
3:04 screen overrides. Basically, anything that's going to override the actual UI of the game or the menus that you interact with. And then I've got tuning overrides. These are overrides of things like animations, food, the mosaic that goes over Sims, you know, when they are naked, any names and interactions. And then the last one is object and world. And this is basically every single object that is like individual in the world or any like terrain or anything that goes in the world as well. Okay. So, the main reason that I organize by creator, and I have remade my mods folder a good seven or eight times, I've tried everything really. The reason why I find labeling by creator the best is because it stops you from having too many folders in your mods folder. So, if I go into lumpinu, for example, because I have a lot of lumpy news mods, for example, one of these mods, it ends in Sims 4 script. A script mod in your mods
3:52 folder can't go more than one folder deep. So, for example, if you're in your mods folder and then I go into Limpun's folder, this is as deep as that file can go. If you place that folder in another folder, then the game won't be able to read it and the the mods will just be broken or just not work. Also, I found the more folders that you've got in your mods folder, the longer it takes your game to load up. So, the reason why I keep it like this is, you know, so that it doesn't take too long to load up. It's easy to go and update mods because as long as you know Lubin News mods are not updated for the latest update, you can go ahead and just remove them. and I'll explain all of that about like updating and everything, but this is just the reason that I organize the way I do. I've also tried another folder organization type, which is going based on the type of mod. So, for example, all gameplay mods go in together. The reason why I don't recommend this is because when you've got more than like four or
4:37 five mods, this folder gets really cluttered really quick. And when you've got so many different creators in there, sometimes you can't even find which mod is related to which. The reason why I think going based on creator name is easiest for updating. It's easy for tracking the mods and it stops the folders from getting too cluttered and it also just means you haven't got 50 million folders. I used to have a folder system like lumpy new and then the mod name and then I used to have like seven or eight folders just for lumpy new. The loading time difference on my mods folder. I kid you not, it was like an additional like six minutes or something. 6 or 8 minutes to load into the game for the same exact same files just in a different folder system. So, I guarantee you this is probably the best way to do it in terms of loading speed and also just efficiency, updating, not
5:25 getting too confused, everything. So, you might also ask why I label my folder in terms of numbers. So, I've got 01 cast 02 build by. Now, the reason I've got it like this is because sometimes certain mods have to be loaded up before other ones. So, as an example, this is an overrides folder. It has to be called this for a specific reason. There's a mod in here by call 1 sim and it's quicker autonomy and simulation lag improvements. This has to load in first. Okay, it's really important that this mod loads in first. The reason that it's in its own folder and it's labeled separately and it's got this little dash in front of it is so that it's labeled at the top. The same as Zeroo's go to school mod, it has this little exclamation mark next to it. This mod, if you're going to use it with AD Pindigo's education overhaul mod, this mod has to load in first. So, the reason
6:11 why I have a folder system specifically like this is because certain mods have to load in before others. Okay. And one other thing that I think you guys might be interested in are these little icons. So, in order to keep the folders nicely organized and also to specifically tell me which folders are like the most in-depth folders, cuz the overrides folder, the cast folder, the build by, they've all got their own icons and these are really cute custom icons that you can set. And these you can download from Midnight Tech. So, this is the post to download the mods folder organization and the icon. There is actually a mods folder like as a default template in here, but you can choose to use that if you want to. But again, this folder has the same structure that I was talking about that I found wasn't very good. Like all utility mods go in one, all gameplay script mods go in one. I find that if you've got more than like five
6:56 or six mods, the folders just get so cluttered. So, I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you've only got like a few mods. If you if you've got like a lot like me, just probably go in terms of creator. So, in this download, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see Midnight Tech folder organizer. Go ahead and download that. It'll go to your downloads folder. Go ahead and open it. And in here, you can see the template for the mods folder. So, you can choose to use that if you want to. The main file that I'm looking for is midnight text folder icons. DLL. Go ahead and grab this and drag this to somewhere where you'll be able to find it easily and two, not delete it. You need to make sure you've always got it on your computer. You can't delete it when you're done with it. So, I just have it in my documents folder right here. You can see I just go ahead and drag it in there. Okay. So, to use it, you go ahead and right click on whatever
7:41 folder that you want. You right click, you click properties, and then go to customize, and then folder icons. Click change icon. And then here, you go ahead and click browse. Go ahead and find that file, which is in just in my documents here, Midnight Tech folder icons. Open that. And then it loads up all of these individual icons. So, you can literally go ahead and select whatever icon you want for whatever folder. I've got specific ones that correlate to me. So the Cath folder has an icon of like clothing. So go ahead and find whatever icon you want. Click on it. Click okay. And then click apply. And then the icon will change for the folder. So the main reason I organize my cast folder by creator name. And you can see that I've got like AHOB, Anto. I have a lot of different creators in here. And then I just dump every single piece of CC that they've got into these folders. So, the
8:27 main reason I do it like this is because, you know, when you load up in game and you try to find the creator's piece of CC, but all of their CC is all over the catalog, sometimes if the creator hasn't labeled them correctly or they've changed their labeling system, sometimes they've got like items at the top of the catalog, sometimes they got some items at the bottom. There's actually a really cool tool that you can use called The Sims 4 Studio, and you can make all of the CC group together in the catalog. Okay, so again, links are all in the description. So, for this section, you're going to have to go ahead and choose if you're on Windows or if you're on Mac. I am on Windows. So, go ahead and click on this. Scroll all the way to the bottom until you see the download installer. Go ahead and click on that. It will link you to a Google Drive. Go ahead and click download. Sometimes this download pings as it can't scan for a virus. Trust me, every mod and CC creator uses this tool. I
9:13 promise you there's no viruses. There's no there's no malware. You're fine. Just go ahead and click download. Okay. So, it's gone to my download. You can see unverified download is blocked. If you're on Chrome or you're on anything, you might need to unblock it. So, you go ahead and click on it and then click download unverified file. It's just because it didn't scan it for viruses. Trust me, it is fine. Go ahead and click on it. Click more info. Click run anyways. Say yes to the little popup. And then go ahead and say I accept the agreement. Next, next and install. And then it's going to ask you to launch The Sims 4 Studio. Go ahead and click finish. And it'll automatically launch. This uh loading, by the way, is going to take a really long time if it's your first time installing. So, just give it a second. Sometimes it can take like a few minutes. So now you're here. You're going to go ahead and click on my CC. Now depending on how much CC you've got.
10:00 This again, this menu might take a really long time to load up. So just be patient with it. Give it a second. So you can see it eventually did load up. From here, you can see that it's literally your mods folder opened up in this little screen. Go ahead and go into Cass. Then go into where all your creators are labeled. I'm going to find a creator who I know their CC ends up going all over the place. Right click this. Click batch edit. Click change cast display index and sort by package name. It's asking to run a backup of your folder that it's editing so that if anything you do that you don't like, you can just go ahead and like replace the files again. So you can go ahead and click run. You can select where you want your backups to go to. My backups are just on my desktop which is default. So from here you need to select a value and this value will have to be unique per creator. So each creator will have like
10:45 1 2 3 four. You can go through each creator and you can even label their folders. Like you could call it Adrian Pastel and then one next to it so that you know they're filtered by one. So I actually keep this handy little sheet here so I can see who's labeled by what. So Ahoo, for example, is labeled as one. Run it. And I'm going to set this as one. Go ahead and click okay. It will load. Depending on how many files it needs to edit and change, if it's doing every single file in the folder, it might take a while. This is where the backup is. So if you don't like the appearance of it in your catalog, you can go back and change it. So it said it fixed 419 files. So now AHOB will show as number one, but they will be right at the very top of the catalog. So I would do this for every creator you found. Their CC is just all over the catalog. You don't need to do it for every CC
11:31 creator. Sorry, I am absolutely sweating. So I've just gone ahead and took off my cardigan because I am Oh my god, I'm I'm sorry if I'm visibly sweating. It's because I I am sweating. Okay, so the next thing I want to show you guys is a mods tracker. So something that I find really, really useful for tracking all of my mods is to have a mods tracker. So I actually made this custom mods tracker, which I will include a link to. So if you guys want to use the exact same one as me, you can. So if you guys want a copy of this, you can go to the file, you can click make a copy, and this will save it to your own drive so that you can edit it. Do not try to request access up here or anything like that. I always get so many share requests whenever I do something like this. So to show you how this works, you go ahead and type the mod name in here. Let's do a few of them
12:17 together so that you guys get an idea of how it works. So we'll use the first one which is basemental and I use basemental rugs with a D. YouTube, I'm not going to let you get me today. Okay, so the mod name is Basemental Rugs with a D. So you go ahead and type this in the mod name section and then creator name. You can go ahead and click down. All of my creators, I've actually gone ahead and set these up already. So down here, you can see you've got a little creator section. So from here, you guys can actually track the creators names and also any links to them if you want to go back and like update your mods easily. You can see that there's a huge list of them already. If the creator name is not already on here and you want to add another one, you can just type down here, add them in, add their link, and they will show up on the mod tracker in creator name just here. Polar Bear Sims.
13:04 Polar Bear Sims was not already on there. So, I'm going to go ahead and copy their name, put them in here. You can add their link in there if you want to. And then in mod tracker, I polar bear Sims will be in there. Now, type in the creator name. So, the creator name is Bental. The mod type. So, basemental rugs is a gameplay mod. It is not an override, so you're not going to select override. You don't actually need to type anything. And this actually shows you how to set up your mods folder. So, in your mods folder, you will have mods, basemental, and then the mod will go in there. Basemental rugs. But the reason why I didn't do the numbers is because obviously I don't know what creators you're going to have. I don't know what numbers you want them to be. So, you can add the number system in yourself. So, let's do the next one together. We'll go for Deadpipool. So, this is MC Command
13:51 Center. And then the creator of this is Deadiple. This mod is a gameplay mod, but it's also a tuning and general mod. I'm going to keep it under general because I think honestly it does everything. It's not an override, so I don't need to select what override type it is. And you can see it's gone ahead and told me where it needs to be installed. Mods, Deadpool, MC Command Center. You can also add links in here to the source. And then that way at any point if you want to go download an update of it or anything like that, you can just really quickly link to it. There's also a mod status column. So you can select whether it's updated, compatible, unknown, or broken. I know that this mod is specifically updated for the newest update. You can actually do a tick box of whether in whether it's in game or not. So if you want to keep track of all your mods and then whilst you're updating some of them, you take some of them out, you can just go ahead
14:37 and uncheck them to show that they're not in game. Maybe you've moved them off temporarily, you can do that. The other thing that I want to show you guys how to add in here is overrides because these display a little bit differently. As I said, all of my overrides, they're specifically in their own individual folders. Let's go ahead and add my creator sim background in here. So, this mod is called Vixated Reflection Cast Background Recolor in soft cyan, and it's made by Scandi Sims. If you want to keep everything really simple and quick, you can just copy and paste it. You don't want to like capitalize things. So, I'm just going to do that for the sake of, you know, showing you it. So, that is the mod name. The creator of this is Scandi Sim. I'm going to add that there. So, this is a override. So, instead of going into mod type, I'm going to say yes, it's an override. Then I need to select what type of override
15:24 it is. So in here there are loads of different override types. If you want to add more, you can go to override types and we have the same as before the all the columns. You can just go ahead and add more in here if you've got any additionals. Pretty much every override has its own section in here. So this is a CS background. So I'm going to add that to there. So now you can see I've got overrides cast background. If we move to the right, you can see it's actually shown the folder system. So, in here it's mods, overrides, cast defaults, cast background, fixated. And you can see if we go go in there, we've got mods, overrides, cast defaults, cast background, and then it's in there. If this folder system is really confusing to you and you feel like you're going to forget where things are, you can just
16:09 use this mods tracker and it will actually show you where to put everything. And in here, you've actually got the same thing, but for CC. So you can go ahead and add in the CC name, the creator name, go ahead and add in what type of CC it is. Uh who is it for, adults, children, everything. It keeps it structured easily. And you can also select whether it's a default replacement or not. So you can turn it on and off. Has the same things. The source, whether it's compatible with the latest update, and then any notes you want to add on it. So if you do want to go down into the nitty-g gritties and track every piece of CC that you use, you can. I personally don't because I use so much CC, but I do normally track like my default replacements and any like major creators that I often use, but not specifically every individual piece of CC cuz I use thousands, literally like 13,000 pieces of CC. So, okay. So, now I want to go over with you
16:55 guys when an update comes out, what do I do and how do I deal with it? How do I keep this massive excess of mods updated? How do I find out if they're updated? How do I remove them if they're not up to date? When an update comes out, I immediately make a folder on my desktop. So, I add a new folder and I call it testing mods. Whatever it is, I just label it something temporarily. So, normally it's like testing mods or something. All my mods that I'm testing go in this folder. So, I'm going to go ahead and open it. Let's just grab the two folders and keep them open side by side like this. Pretty much every single time I go ahead and grab every single mod because normally with updates, mods always break. and I select all of them besides better exceptions and besides the resource.config. So every single
17:40 thing, sometimes I even do overrides, but it depends. I just go ahead and drag these over to testing mods. Pretty much what I do is I either test each folder individually, see if the game's fine, boot up with it. So I go grab base, drag that in, load the game up with just base mental, see if it's good. If it is, close it back down and go again. So I just keep dragging each folder in individually. But I also use my Discord section. So if you go into my Discord, again, I'm going to include a link down in the description. So if you go to my Discord, and this is a massive server. There's literally 10,000 of us in this server. Um, oh, actually, there's 11,300. So if you want to come join, it's really nice. You can find loads of mods, CC, everything in here. You can join if you scroll down to the Sims section and go to mod news. This will
18:26 give you an update of almost every single mod that is either updated, that is reported, broken, everything. So, it's really easy to keep track of what mods you've got installed and what's broken. For example, Sim Realist I just literally installed yesterday because they just updated. So, these three mods, it gives you a link to all of them. You can add them back in. If I know a mod has been confirmed broken, for example, at this little report here, broken, confirmed, were more customers. I just remove Wazoo's folder or I move that mod to my desktop and I add it to that little folder to keep track of everything. You can use the Discord, but you can also use Scarlet Realms mod list, which also does a similar thing where it reports mods that are broken or updated. It's not always completely accurate or completely up to date. It is a good base to use. You can go to the safer work section, which is appropriate for all ages. If you don't use any 18
19:12 plus mods, you can go to this section. If you use things like Wicked Whims like I do, then you go to the not safe for work section as well. Scroll down to here and here you can see the mod name, the creator, whether it's updated, and its last known update. and then any notes that are details about it. Okay, so as an example, say you want to check if basemental rugs has been updated for the newest update. You can see you've got basemental and it has been updated. Last time it was updated was on the 21st and then you can go ahead and use that and it will actually link you to the mod as well. So you can just go ahead and download it from here. So this is super useful if you want to go through each mod that you've got individually, check if it's updated. But again, this isn't always completely accurate up to date, especially if a patch has just come out. So, normally you need to do a bit of testing yourself. This won't necessarily
19:58 be updated. Okay. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about is a really good mod that I recommend by Lumpy. The mod is called Milestone Fixes. It is actually two Sims 4 script files. If you used mods in a household and then try to load up with that household without the mods installed because, you know, maybe they're broken with the latest update, whatever it is, sometimes these files can actually fix that problem for you. And you can download these. Again, link is in the description, but if you go to the post that I've linked and then just click download all, you can see that the two individual files are on there. Just place them into your mods folder, place them into lumpy new, whatever. Just make sure that again they're not more than one folder deep. All right, so the next thing that I want to talk to you guys about is an incredibly important mod, and it's called Team X's Better Exceptions. Okay, so this is the page to download the mod. And basically, Better
20:43 Exceptions tells you if you have a broken mod installed or if there's a conflict between two different mods that you're using in your game. It can do loads of different things, but that is like the main bulk of it. So, you know, whenever you're playing The Sims 4 and in the top right hand side it says a last exception is generated. This then pops up and basically says, "Oh, hey, I saw that last exception. Do you want me to have a look at it and report what mod is causing it or what bug it was, this basically catches all of that and then tells you what the problem is. So, after you install better exceptions, you can see it comes up just in the top right here. You might even have like a popup to say this is your first time installing. Do you want to run a test?" But you can click here, open better exceptions menu, and it will run a patch compatibility scanner. Bear in mind that sometimes just because it says that something is incompatible doesn't mean that it definitely is for sure. So take it with a grain of salt. So the main
21:29 thing that I want to show you guys is sometimes you'll get a last exception, which I've just gone ahead and triggered one. And it says, "Last exception was caught by MCC. Oops, I see there's some issues with your mods. Please sit tight while I find which files are the problem." This will actually generate a better exception that will actually tell you what the problem is. Obviously for me it's not going to say anything but this is just generating. You can actually leave this to generate. You can click close. Just keep playing the game as usual and it will run that in the background to see what the problem was. So you can see that the exception alert has occurred and it says possible cause you obviously here sometimes it will say what mod is causing it. You can go ahead and click on view full report. This full report will open up and it tells you what mod is the issue. So it will say possible cause and then it will list the mod in there and then it will say what the reason is. Obviously, I forced this exception, but if you have this generate
22:16 naturally while you're in game, it will tell you. So, the other thing that you can do is actually locate CC that's on a Sim. Now, this is so useful. Okay, know sometimes you see a Sim walking past and they're using a piece of CC that they shouldn't be. Just an example, Seline is actually the Sim that I used to take the thumbnail for today's video. And she has a laptop in her hand, which obviously, you know, looks great when you're taking a screenshot, but when she's just walking around town, you don't really want her to be wearing that and it will just be sitting there. You know, sometimes if you've installed CC, it can automatically apply. Maybe you don't want it installed anymore. You can actually go and find what piece of CC is causing that issue. So, if you shiftclick on a Sim, it will load up a menu. Now, depending on how many mods you've got, this might look a little bit different, but scroll through to more options, and you can say better exceptions, locate outfit CC. Go ahead
23:03 and click this, and this is checking all the files and all the pieces of CC that are on this sim. And also depending on how many mods you have will depend on how long this takes, and it will report exactly what files of CC are being used on the sim. Okay, so you can see here it says better exceptions outfit CC tracker. And this is actually listing every piece of CC that I used on that sim. So you actually can figure out exactly what pieces of CC are showing up on what Sims. So if you find any piece of CC that's broken, you know, sometimes Sims will be walking around and they like they're red and black and sometimes they've got even question marks over them or they've got like pink boxes on them, you can actually find out what piece of CC is causing the issue on that Sim that was generated with it. Okay, so the other thing that I wanted to show you guys is again back in the Sims 4 Studio like we did to sort our CC earlier. Okay, so in here you can see
23:49 loads of different batch fixes that you can run. So sometimes certain CC breaks with updates and you can run these batch fixes. I know that um beds broke with high school years. So if you've got any beds that are broken, you can try running this and see if it fixes it. There's a bunch of different things that you can do. You can also update images for DirectX11. If you guys are still using DirectX9, there is a version of the game that is better that you can use in the settings that's called DirectX11. So you can see if you've got that turned on on a little check box. Sometimes your mods are not updated for DirectX11. You actually have to update them. So you can run the batch fix. The main one that I use is actually to disallow CC for default garment. What this is going to do is, you know, sometimes CC automatically gets generated on townies. Sometimes I might go and browse folder that I want to run this batch fix on, which I go to mods and then locate down
24:36 to my poses folder because in here I've got a bunch of accessories that Sims can use to pose with for pictures, but obviously I don't want them being generated on townies or on any other Sims. So you can go ahead and click on your poses folder, click select folder, and then run this. And this will actually run the batch fix on that folder. Now, if you are going to run a batch fix on your entire mods folder, so if you're just going to run it, please make sure you go ahead and remove your default replacements. It's very important. Also, make sure you go ahead and remove any no EA eyelashes or anything like that. I would also recommend removing any mod you've got. It's best just to run this on just your CC. In here, you can go and locate if you do break anything and you want to go ahead and revert it and get the old version back. You can go in here and go to your backup and all the files that it
25:23 changed are in here. So, it's really easy if you do just break something to just go back and grab it from the backup. But just easier to remove it if you're going to break it. Okay, so moving on to the next program I want to show you guys. And this is such an incredible program. Probably my favorite out of the lot than removing specific pieces of CC like build by or cast CC, more specifically cast CC. You know, if you've got a hair and you want to just go through and see all of your hairs really easily and you want to delete a few of them, this is the program that you need. So, let's go ahead and show you how to install it. You go to the link that I've included in the description. So, download the Sims 4 mod manager. Click right here. You will click whichever version you have. So, if you're on Windows 10 or Windows 11, click here. Mac Intel or Silicon, you can choose whichever version you've got. I'm on Windows, so makes it nice and easy. Download. You can see it's gone to the installer. Click on here. You can
26:08 click next. You can say I accept. I would just leave it wherever it is. Click next. Click accept and install. And this will install Mod Manager. So once you've got it installed, you can type it in in the search bar down below. Click mod manager. Give it a second because if you've got a lot of mods and CC, it's going to take a while to load up. I use this mod to do two different things. The first one is to just generally sort through CC. Turn CC off that I don't want to use or turn poses off that I don't want to use or to sort through CC and delete some of them. So, you have your overview, folders, categories, import. I normally use the folders section. If you're going to use the same system that I showed you earlier, then it should look something similar to this. You can click create a sim, and then all ages. And from here, you can see every single piece of CC and the thumbnail for it in game. So, I'm
26:55 just going to show you an example. Ah, every piece of CC here is displayed. So, say for example, I'm like, you know what? I don't want 50 million of the same hair. We have this hair. It's called Emma hair, right? So this version is without edges and this one is with edges. You know, you could fill the edge around the top. Say for example, you know that you have edges installed separately. And you want to choose customize the edges you use. You can go ahead and click on this and then click delete. And this will delete the file from your mods folder. So I personally do this when I'm trying to clean out my mods. So many of the same type of hair. You can just go through and select a bunch of different things. Maybe select some of these hairs. Maybe I've got loads of accessories for hairs that I've previously gotten rid of. You know, you can go through and do this. Go ahead and click on them, select all the ones you want, and then click delete up here. Click okay, and it will delete those
27:42 files. The other thing that I like doing is turning off my CC. Sometimes I don't always want my poses to show up because it just clutters up my folder when I know I'm not going to take any screenshots of my Sims. I don't need all of these random poses installed and all of these accessories with like the champagne. You can see what I mean, right? Like all these individual items. I don't need those. You can actually go up to the top here and say activate all files or deactivate all files. So, if I go ahead and click on this, this is going to update all the files and deactivate them. So, they are technically in my mods folder, but they're not going to load up. So, the game is just going to literally ignore them. Um, but if you ever want to turn them back on, you can just click the little, you know, tick button. It will reactivate all the CC again, and then obviously it will load up in your next
28:27 load when you load the game up. So, the other thing that I want to show you on here is in the tools section. If you go to the left, click on tools, and you can check for duplicate files. I normally just use exact same file name. So, if a piece of CC in your game is a duplicate of something else, you can go ahead and click open on this. Give it a second to load. And there we go. Look, look how useful that is. I do have duplicates. So, in here, you can see I have two of the same file. So, I have Sonia hair, but you can see, look, they're literally the same file, except one's got an underscore in front of it. Like I don't know why I've got two of these same hairs, but they're just labeled differently. So you can see that this file was installed on the 1st of the 9th, 2025. This file was installed back in 2024. So this is the older file. You can actually go ahead and click on this and delete selected or delete it from
29:13 here. I'm probably just going to remove all of the files that are named Josh GCO, but without the square brackets. So, when I was installing Missy Hissy Hopes and Fears mod, I've actually got two of the same file, but one's an updated version and one's an old version. So, you can see this is the same file, Get Together, version 3.5, and I've forgotten to delete the 3.4 version. I'm just going to go ahead and select this. And the same for all of these. I've got the old versions because I messed up when I was installing it. So, that is very useful to know. So, I'm just going to go and uninstall all the or delete all of the 3.4 versions here. And okay, I've got more. You know what? Let's just commit to this a little bit. I'll do it I'll do it with you guys and I'll clean up my mods folder. I can't believe I was like my mods folder is squeaky clean. Who the did I think I was? The ego on me. The audacity of
30:01 me. So, I've got two more programs to talk to you guys about. The next one is called The Sims 4 Tray Importer. And I use this program to specifically go through and narrow down specific pieces of CC that either don't have a thumbnail in Mod Manager or for build by CC because a lot of my build by CC is merged. So it's difficult to be able to go through and like find the individual piece of CC. So let me show you how I do that. Okay, so it will link you here. So you're going to go ahead and click download this file right here. Click on it. So it's going to ask which version you want to download. I'm just going to download the top one, which is setup, cuz I'm guessing this is the setup that you need. Click download. It's installing as a do.zip. Click on that. You can see the Sims 4 tray importer setup. Go ahead and double click. Click
30:46 more info as usual. Click run anyway. Say yes. When it says, do you want to run this unknown program? Trust me, every program that I'm showing you guys is not broken. It's not it's not any viruses. I've used these programs for years. All right. Go ahead and click on next. And go ahead and click install. And this will install the tray importer onto your computer. So it might say at the end, do you want to load tray importer or you might need to go and do what I'm doing where I'm typing it in. I'm going to go on Sims 4 tray importer and load it up. So this program is so good and let me show you why. So, pretty much the way that this program works is every single build or sim that you have saved to your library, either from the gallery or that you've made or, you know, you've gone in and manually saved whatever, you can go through and click on these and see every piece of CC that
31:33 you used on that build. So, earlier you can see that we used better exceptions to see what CC was on Serena that was the thumbnail sim, but I can go ahead and click on her. It loads her up and this is what she looked like in game obviously without G-Shade. So, jump scale. And then you can go ahead and click on the little CC tab. Give it a second to load depending on how much CC you've got. This might take a really long time or it might take not too long at all. So, in here you can see every single piece of CC that I used on that sim. And from here, you can actually go ahead and click on each piece of CC, right click, and click show containing folder. And it will even link you to the file in your mods folder. Okay. So, I want to show you guys how I personally use the tray importer to find pieces of
32:18 build by CC that I want to go ahead and delete and clean up. So, we're going to go into a lot. Normally, I just find some random big lot and then click on it and go into build mode in there. Okay. So, from here, we can now go and find all the pieces of CC that I don't want installed anymore. Sometimes I go and sort by all CC. Sometimes I'll just go and go buy like beds or, you know, something that I've got a lot of that I want to clean out. I actually use a mod called better build by and this has a really cool feature to allow you to hide Maxis. So this will allow you to hide anything that's non CC and only show your CC. So then you can just go through and see if you like the piece of CC or not. So these types of CC, I love stuff like this and stuff like this. Oh,
33:04 perfect. Okay. So, you can go through and place all of the pieces of CC down on this lot that you want to uninstall. So, that you don't want to keep. So, I feel like I'm never going to use this pet bed ever. So, I'm going to go ahead and place it. I'm going to go up here, click save to your library, save the lot, and you can see the little pet bed just over there. Go ahead and click save lot to my library and close down the game. And from here, I load up my Trey importer. Again, if you had it already loaded up before, go ahead and close it and reopen it so that it regenerates. You can see the lot that I just saved is now on here. I can go ahead and click on it. You can see that tiny little pet bed over there that I want to delete. I'm going to click CC and it will load and show me that exact piece of CC that I don't want anymore. I'm going to go ahead and right click it, show containing folder, and delete it because
33:50 I know I'm never going to use that piece of CC. And there you go. That's exactly how you do it. Okay, we are nearly nearly done. I am so sorry this has taken so long, but I really want to show you guys everything that I use in the background for keeping my folder healthy and well, keeping my loading screens as low as possible considering the amount of CC that I've got and also just everything that I use to, you know, fix when updates come out and they break everything. So, I'm going to move on to the last program that I want to show you guys. It's called the Clean Launcher app and it's by Midnight Tech. So, this is the Clean Launcher for Windows. Um, so if you're on Mac, I don't think you'll be able to use this, but anybody on Windows, you'll be able to use this. So, this allows you to run a clean launcher of your Sims game. It can also auto sort your mods folder. You can use this if you want to. I personally don't. Again,
34:38 as you can see here, do not use this feature if you're happy with your mods folder layout. I am very happy and I do have my spreadsheet that literally organized my mods for me. So, I won't be using this. But if you do want to use this to organize your mods for you, you can. I use this program for running a clean launch of The Sims 4. So, you can see it cleans cache and error logs. launches The Sims 4 with one click. So, for here, you need to click on Patreon and you join as a free member to access a download. Um, so make sure that if it says to join as a member, just make sure you click join and it will offer it for you for free. I'm going to scroll all the way down to the bottom and click clean launcher. Download that. As you can see, it's gone as a zip in my downloads. You can go ahead and rightclick this and extract all. You need to move this folder somewhere where you're not going to accidentally delete it. Somewhere you can easily get to it.
35:23 And then from here you can actually just run the application. So go ahead and double click on this. Click more info. Click run anyway. And from here it actually says do you want to create a backup of your mods folder. I would recommend backing up just in case. I actually have a backup already. So I'm not going to bother doing that because it will take a really long time otherwise. But just go ahead and make a backup of your mods folder if you can and have the space for it. Other than that you can just go ahead and click continue. Now this is a section that you need to be careful that you don't just automatically enable. If you are like me and you have sorted your mods folder the same way that I've showed you in this video and the same way that the spreadsheet shows you, go ahead and disable this. So, this is going to auto sort your mods folder. If you just want a really easy mods folder, you just want to drag stuff in there and it'll do it all for you. You can try this out. I personally have not, so I cannot help
36:09 you with this. It actually says it can't find the Sims 4, so please locate it. I'm going to go ahead and set this up because my Sims 4 is actually installed on a specific drive. So, I'm going to go ahead and click The Sims 4 x64 open. And now we are led to this page. So I'm going to go ahead and click on this. And I'm going to say clear cache only when changes to the mods folder are detected. And I'm also going to say remember this every time. And then I'm going to say clean and launch the Sims 4. This is going to open the EA app or Steam. And it is then going going to launch The Sims 4 and clean up any cache files that need to be if I've edited my mods folder. So I'm going to go ahead and click this. It's saying it's deleting six files and it's launching the Sims 4. And then if I just wait, my Sims 4 game will load up and it loads up a clean version of the Sims game. Especially if
36:55 you like me and you install loads of pieces of CC or you edit your mods folder really regularly, update things, add things, this is very useful. Okay, so that was everything from me today. I hope I didn't absolutely talk your ears off and I hope that everything I showed you was helpful and useful. You guys will have to let me know what you thought in the comment section below. I really do hope it helped you guys. If it did help, if you guys could go ahead and leave a like on today's video, subscribe down below. I make loads of Sims content if you want to go ahead and check out my playlist. I've got loads of Sims content. However, obviously, as you heard at the start of the video, I have actually just lost all of my saves due to a corruption with the latest update. So, very unfortunately, I'm going to have to start all new Sims series, which I say unfortunately, I'm also really excited for. So, I'm actually going to be working on a forever save file where I'm going to build an entire save file with you guys, make all the Sims in
37:41 there, you know, renovate or build all the lots and then play rotationally in that save while I'm building it and play with all the families that I build and basically make like a Desperate Housewives type of drama that goes on in the neighborhood. I'm really excited. So, if you guys want to subscribe for that, I would really, really appreciate and I hope you guys enjoy that series. I'll have a video coming on that this week as well. So, yeah, I love you guys. I hope you enjoyed and I will speak to you all in the next one.
