The best Sims 4 mods can completely change and expand your game. New ones appear all the time on ModTheSims—which has long been the go-to hub for creators—every week. There, you’ll find everything from minor tweaks (like making medicine cabinets actually dispense medicines) to complete reworks of major systems.
It can be hard to keep track of which of the best Sims 4 mods are working because some of the best mods haven’t been tended to in years, and official game updates can break them or add features that make them obsolete.
With that in mind, here’s a collection of the best up-to-date mods for the Sims 4, from the tiny to the virtual life-changing. Make sure you read the installation instructions for each one, and check for any conflicts to make sure you’re not running two that will clash.
To get even more out of the game check out our round-up of the best Sims 4 expansions and game packs. If you want immortal Sims, free houses, and infinite money, check out our list of Sims 4 cheats.
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Players are adding new careers to ModTheSims every week, so if you’re ever looking for inspiration on which direction to steer your Sim in, give it a browse. The imagination behind them is impressive, and most of them give you a fully-fleshed out path to follow. Whether you want to become a bowling champ, game developer, professional hacker or private investigator, you can now follow your dreams. We especially like transforming our sim from a basketball draft pick to league MVP in the SBA Baller career.
A word of warning: these custom careers won’t work with most career overhaul mods, such as Turbo Careers—but don’t let that put you off.
Emotional Inertia
Sims are an emotional bunch, and their moods flip like a light switch. Just doing the simplest of activities—having an good meal in a well-decorated room—will fill them with joy for a few hours, but then the feeling will vanish. If that’s not to your taste, or if you think the system is just too easy to control, then you might want to download Emotional Inertia.
It makes emotions more meaningful: they’ll last longer, it’ll be harder to override them, and it will take more effort to reach the upper ranks of each one. You’ll no longer have an iron grip over whether your Sims are up or down, which makes them feel a bit more like real people.
Custom food interactions
If you want more culinary creativity, then Custom Food Interactions is the only place you should start. It doesn’t add any ingredients or recipes to the game—it just adds new possible interactions to cooking equipment along with a menu framework that lets you craft a fridge-full of custom meals from other modders’ kitchens.
With it installed, you’ll want to head over to the ModTheSims custom food section and pick from the menu. You’ll find recipes for everything from Chinese dumplings to beignets, blueberry cheesecake to biriyani. Grab an optional bib to make sure you don’t accidentally salivate on your keyboard.
Have Some Personality Please!
This is one of our favourites on the best Sims 4 mods list. It's a huge overhaul of—as you can probably guess—the way Sims’ personalities work. It changes lots in the background (read the description on the mod page for an exhaustive list) but the best thing about it is that it eliminates all idle conversations. Never again will two Sims blab aimlessly to each other about nothing in particular: instead, they’ll be forced to choose an interaction, which is far more interesting.
Those interactions aren’t random, either: the mod will select them based on traits, moods and the existing relationships between the two Sims in question, which will give them a greater sense of autonomy than ever before. Expect more kisses from love interests—and more sucker punches from your enemies.
Become a Sorceror
Do you miss the magic of previous Sims games? Become a Sorcerer adds a hearty serving of the supernatural, letting your Sims sling magic spells that can either suck the sadness out of a friend or strike down an enemy with a bolt of lightning.
You just need to touch lump of clay, choose one of three rituals—they’ll determine which Needs are replaced with new magical ones—and get to casting. Using magic strengthens your powers and unlocks new spells, but it also depletes your “Magical Connection” (a mana bar, basically), and you’ll have to drain either yourself or another Sim to replenish it.
Depending on your choices, you’ll lean towards good or evil, which changes the type of spells you can cast. Do-gooders can eventually bring ghosts back to life, but if that doesn’t sound like fun, just set fire to a table instead. If you’re bored of your current playthrough, then this is bound to liven it up.
New personality traits
Many of the best Sims 4 mods affect the ways Sims interact with each other. The Sims 4 has a long list of traits that change the way a Sim behaves, and because they’re relatively easy for modders to create you can quickly expand that list through custom content. The Gamer trait, for example, lets Sims improve their gaming and programming skills faster, while the Functional Robots group of traits lets you spawn human-machine hybrid Sims, or just full-on robots who must visit a recharging station every few hours.
There are tonnes of individual traits available on ModTheSims, or you can grab pre-made packages of traits, like this one from modder KawaiiStacie. It will make your Sims natural salespeople, born artists, or slick dancers. Get ready to bust a move.
Want to try out several new traits at once? This mod lets you add more than three traits at a time: you just need to type a quick cheat code including the name of the desired trait to add it to your Sim. It’s all explained on the mod page.
Build your own houseboat
If you’re tired on living on land then this mod lets you take to the water, transforming the game’s decorative boat models into full-on houseboats. They look pretty, and the limited space means you’ll have to get creative with what furniture you try to pack into them. It’s a good choice for a minimalist designer. Click here for a download link alongside instructions on building your first boat.
If you’re feeling particularly outdoorsy, then this separate mod will let you add a custom fishing location off of the side of your new home.
True Happiness
Hum along
Enjoy the Sims 4's wonderfully jaunty soundtrack with the best gaming headsets out there.
The idea behind this mod from roBurky is to make your Sims’ happiness “fleeting, meaningful, and personal”. In the normal game, ‘happy’ is the default state, but with this mod your Sims will have to make do with simply being ‘fine’ most of the time. They’ll only be truly happy when something special happens to them such as meeting a new partner, ripping through a good workout or eating a tasty meal. These events, of which there are many, will boost their mood considerably for a short period of time, which feels a bit more realistic.
Don’t worry, the ‘fine’ change doesn’t mean they’ll be grumpy by default—it still counts as a positive mood state.
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Old French Village
Bring the Alsace to the Sims 4 with this charming village of old-fashioned cottages. There are ten houses to choose from of varying grandeur (the mansion at the top of the hill is particularly spacious) as well as a pub and café for when your Sims feel peckish.
Somehow, modder catdenny has made the village only using default assets from the game, which is impressive. It does mean that there are slight variations in style, but unless you’re a stickler for European architecture then it probably won’t bug you. It just looks like a nice place to live.
You can add the village in ‘Manage Worlds’, but it will only fit in a vacant 64x64 lot. Sadly, there are no lots big enough in the base game, so you’ll have to travel to Brindleton Bay (part of the Cats & Dogs expansion) or Windenburg (from Get Together) to find a viable plot.
Get to college
We’ve mentioned simmythesim’s Get to College mod before because it fills a gap that those who played The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 will keenly feel. The mod hasn’t been updated in many years, but luckily another modder has come along and patched it up. Grab it here.
Maybe one day we’ll get an official university expansion for The Sims 4, but for now this addition to the best Sims 4 mod list will let you pick one of three majors, carry out related activities and attend lectures, and study to get a good grade.
If the mod doesn’t work for you, then this University Career mod is a decent alternative, although it won’t actually let you visit the classroom. Those interested in the academic lives of their younger Sims may also want to check out Zerbu’s Go to School mod—just make sure you add a new Elementary School or High School to the neighbourhood for it to work.
Less 'Musical Chairs'
This sounds boring, but Sims’ seating habits are so weird that Chris mentioned them in our Sims 4 review. Particularly annoying is the way they move around mid-conversation; when there are several Sims involved normal conversation can look like an elaborate game of Musical Chairs. Shimrod101 has built a mod that fixes that, making it far more likely that Sims will just stay put.
The mod’s download links are outdated, but thanks to another helpful player you can grab an updated version from here (scroll down to LittleMsSam’s comments). By default, it’ll also disable the occasionally infuriating group conversations Sims have around the table, which can override any one-on-one chats you’re trying to have. If you prefer, you can grab a version that keeps group conversations intact.
Turbo Careers
Another one from Zerbu, the Turbo Careers mod makes all adult (and two teen) careers function like the active careers from the Get to Work expansion. You can download work venues from the Gallery, including ones with a combined function, or make your own—just make sure they have the right objects for Sims to do their job.
The necessary activities for career progression are naturally related to the career—programming, cooking, exercising—and sometimes Sims will receive fieldwork. An athlete might have to go to the gym and show off her muscles, while a Sim who works in business might have to offer career advice to those running retail venues.
You can browseall available careers here and the venue requirements for every job here.
MC Command Center
Where Do Script Mods Go Sims 4
MCCC is a mega-mod that lets you tweak virtually aspect of your Sims’ lives, giving you godlike control over them and others in their world. You can blacklist certain clothing items, even on Sims you aren’t controlling. You can set employment rates for Sims of different ages, scan Sims to find out if they’re pregnant, or even terminate the pregnancy.
There are also lots of automatic settings geared towards letting non-controlled Sims live full lives without you, getting married and having babies of their own volition, and you can also use the mod to adjust the in-game time settings so your Sims don’t take half a day to shower and have breakfast.
Heights
With the new Create-a-Sim tool in The Sims 4, you can spawn Sims of many different widths, but you can't alter how tall they are. This height slider from GODJUL1 lets you adjust the height of your Sims so that the world looks more naturally varied: just click and drag their feet in Create-a-Sim to stretch or shrink them.
Replacement paintings
Once your artist Sim has churned out five paintings a day for a week you start to see the same images coming up again and again. This mod, from DaisyTighfield, replaces those default paintings across all categories with images from around the web, featuring lots of fanart from popular movies and video games.
If you like what you see, you can follow the links provided to find the original images on Deviantart or other sites. You can even create your own masterpieces for your Sims to paint in-game—the instructions are on the mod page.
Gender Preference mod
The Gender Preference mod lets you change the preferences Sims have for romantic partners of particular genders (in The Sims 4 currently that’s just two, female and male). You can adjust the numbers to set your Sims to prefer one gender to the exclusion of the other, to prefer one but also like the other, or to like both equally. Romance away.
Risky WooHoo
Another mod bringing The Sims closer to real life is one from PolarBearSims. It introduces a chance that female Sims who WooHoo rather than explicitly Try for Baby will still fall pregnant. The mod comes with a variety of different percentage risks and adjusts the chances based on where your Sims are getting it on as well as the traits they possess. It also reworks aspects of pregnancy, introducing complications and possible infertility for some Sims.
It should be noted that you can also manually adjust the chances of getting pregnant in MCCC. Risky WooHoo is compatible with that mod, but MCCC will overwrite the percentage chances.
If you’re looking to change the game even more, have a proper dig into the Create a Sim ‘custom gender settings’ in the base game. They were updated a while back and now provide you with more options, such as the ability to allow same-sex couples to fall pregnant.
And for even more control, check out artulwww’s Pregnancy Mega Mod, which lets you do things like give birth to quintuplets.
For more on the Sims, check out our Sims 4 review and our account of the Sims 4's terrifying first-person mode.
Sims 4 Custom Content in .package format must to be installed in Mods folder where the resource.cfg file is located, Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Mods
Sims and Lots .trayitem,.blueprint, .bpi , .hhi, .sgi, .householdbinary … must be installed in tray folder, Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Tray
Scripts and Core mods .pyo, .py must be installed as archives (zipped) inMods folder, Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Mods
Atention! If the Custom Content is compressed as .zip or .rar you must use a program like 7zip (free), WinZip, WinRar… to extract it before placing in the Mods folder.
In Mods folder can be created subfolders for an easy management of the custom content. Read how to do this at Mod The Simshere
More Useful articles How to install Sims 4 Custom Content (Mods):
The Sims Resource – Installing The Sims 4 Downloads
Sims Vip – How To Install Custom Content in The Sims 4
Sims Wiki – Installing Sims 4 Package Files
Sims Wikia – Installing custom content
Carl’s The Sims 4 Guide – Tips for Crashing, Lag and Other Misc Tips
The Sims™ News – It’s a Mod Mod World
Modding The Sims 4 can make the game more vibrant and varied, especially when it comes to your Sims’ looks. Here are some of the best mods that will put more skin tones, eye colors, freckles, and hair in your game. With these, you’ll be able to create Sims that are closer to how you envision them in your head.
In the first part of this series rounding up the most essential Sims mods, I ran down the modes you should install to change how the game plays. (If you’re looking to get into Sims 4 modding, that’s the best place to start.) For this installment, I’m taking a look at the mods that change how your Sims look. As seasoned Simmers know, making a Sim is the important first step in telling a story in the game. How Sims look can impact how you see their personality, and how you direct them as they bumble through life. Why not make them look their very best?
A Quick Word About Simmer Terms:Sims modders use some terminology that makes perfect sense if you’re enmeshed in the community, but not as much sense if you aren’t. Here’s a primer: “BGC” stands for “base game compatible,” meaning you don’t have to own anything other than the base game to use the mod. “Mesh required” means that the mod you’re downloading is either a retexture or a recolor of another Simmer’s 3D model, which means that you’ll also need to download that model and put it in your game. Usually, they’ll provide a link. “Default” mods, which you’ll see for eyes and skin tones, replace the game’s default options. You can only have one default mod in each category. “Non-default” puts the mod into other categories, usually somewhere in the accessories or skin details, so you can mix and match.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get to the mods. It’s quite easy to install Sims mods—just download these files and put them into the empty “Mods” folder in the game’s directory, which EA has helpfully placed there already for all you aspiring modders. None of the mods I have listed here conflict with one another, so feel free to install them all simultaneously.
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Love The Skin You’re In
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the skintones in The Sims 4 kinda suck. There’s not a lot of options, especially in the darker end of the spectrum, even though EA added more dark skin tones last year. If you’re not desperately searching for the perfect shade of brown, you might still find yourself out of luck when it comes to pale skin tones, which have some funky undertones. Some intrepid Sims modders have taken it upon themselves to add shades or make “skinblends,” which reshade the existing ones to be more flattering.
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- Xmiramira’s Melanin Pack 1 & 2
Adds around fifty brown skin tones—and a few paler ones too.
- MadMono’s “Knight” Skinblend
Overall brightens up the face, giving your Sims a clearer complexion.
- Grimcookies’s Lazarus Skinblend
A kinda trendy-looking skinblend that gives Sims great highlights, from pale to dark skin.
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Get Frecked
The Sims 4 comes with a few moles and freckles, but not enough for my liking. One thing that’s definitely missing are dense expanses of freckles, and moles and freckles that cover the whole body. These freckle and mole mods run the gamut from a sparse dusting to Pippi Longstocking.
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- Mayberries’ Moles
Some subtle beauty marks for the face.
- WildyMiniatureSandwich’s Subtle Freckles and Moles
Full-body freckles and moles in delicate patterns.
- Simreaper’s Shadowboxing
Dense, all-over freckles.
- NolanSim’s Freckle Overlay
- 12 swatches of realistic freckles, from sparse to dense, in four variations.
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Eyes On Fleek
I didn’t use to be particular about what my Sims’ eyes looked like until I started watching Sims YouTubers. All their Sims had big, bright vibrant eyes, whereas mine were kinda dull looking. The secret was mods—not just for eyecolors, but for eyelashes and eyebrows as well. Gotta get those peepers in the right frames, after all.
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- Kijiko Catfood’s 3D Lashes
The best of the best when it comes to lashes. You should know that the skin detail version sometimes conflicts with bracelets and rings, though.
Sims 4 Mods Custom Content
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- Pralinesims’ Maxis Match Eyebrow Pack 01
Pralinesims has a ton of eyebrows on offer, but you wouldn’t go wrong starting here.
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- Simandy’s Luz Eyes
Bright, sweet, shimmering eyes.
- Puderosasims’ Gem Eyes
Bold and brilliant, just like a gemstone.
- Hazelios’ Chamomille Eyes
Cartoon-y eyes for your fun and silly Sims.
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No Boring Hair Ever
I love getting new hairstyles for my Sims, especially because they don’t have a lot of options for curly hair, or for men. Some things are easier to understand how they were overlooked—who knew that ombre hair would have such staying power, or that blunt bobs would come back into fashion? But given how many people in the world have curly hair, that makes a little less sense to me. Thank god for Simmers.
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There are tons and tons of hair mods for Sims 4, but here’s just a few of the absolute best to get you started and show you how much a new ‘do can change your (virtual) life.
Curly Hair
- SavvySweet’s Patti Puffs
Cute afro puffs that wouldn’t look out of place on an Instagram star.
- SheSpeaksSimlish’s Curly Fro
A soft afro, for sims with dense but looser curls.
- LeeLeeSims’ Space Bun Fun
Long curly hair with two cute little buns up top—I love wearing my real life hair like this.
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Trendy Hair
- AHarris00Britney’s Sam Hair
Two cute braids, with a braided crown.
- Vikai’s Margot Hair
A sharp and stylish bob.
- BlueMoonSims’s Margo Hair
This Margo is a shoulder length curly cut with curly bangs.
- Zebrazests’s Isabelle Hair
Hair inspired by Animal Crossing’s Isabelle. Okay, maybe this isn’t essential, but I couldn’t resist.
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Men’s Hair
- QwertySims’s Xavi Hair
A tousled mane fit for a 90s heartthrob.
- KotCat’s Connor Hair
A standard, but fashionable, fade.
- Zebrazest’s Sean Hair
Slightly curly hair for a sim that doesn’t own a brush.
Looking for more mods? Want to load up that folder until you have no hard drive space left? All of the creators whose work is listed here have many, many wonderful Sims mods to check out, and I encourage you to do so. Just watch out—if you’re anything like me, you’re going to end up with hundreds of mods in no time.