Modding The Sims is almost as old as the franchise itself. The Sims 4 has a particularly healthy modding and custom content community, thanks to the longevity of the game.
Having so many mods to choose from can be as overwhelming as it is awesome. Sure, it’s great being able to customise your saves to your exact tastes and needs – but sometimes it’s really hard to know where to even begin. Especially if you’re new to mods and don’t know how to use them or what to look for yet.
There are a few mods that I can hardly imagine simming without. They’re useful toolsmregardless of your playstyle, and give you a nice introduction to the world of modding.
MC Command Centre (MCCC)
Deaderpool’s MC Command Centre (MCCC) is a little tricky to explain, but it’s one of the most useful mods you could add to your saves. It helps you to control and fine-tune your game exactly how you want to.
With a massive number of options to sort through, using it can be a little overwhelming. However, it can be a total lifesaver when you want to achieve something niche or specific, like tuning Sim lifespans or neighbourhood story progression.
It also comes with extensive documentation, making it easy to understand with time.
Better BuildBuy

TwistedMexi is a heavyweight modder in The Sims community, with a long list of mods that overhaul core game mechanics and add new ones. You might’ve heard of them from their Create-a-World mod, which brings back custom neighbourhoods, or their All Cheats mod, which enables extra cheat codes.
My favourite mod of theirs is the Better BuildBuy mod, which revolutionises how you use debug and live edit objects. In case you aren’t familiar, debug and live edit objects are loads of hidden items in Build/Buy Mode.
The catch is, they’re tucked away behind cheat codes, which is frankly a pain to access. And, they aren’t very well organised once you do unlock them.
This mod makes hidden objects immediately accessible without inputting any cheats. They’re also more nicely organised, making them way easier to find and sort through.
Release all Ghosts & Get Urn for

Ghosts in The Sims 4 don’t always work exactly as planned. This can lead to all kinds of glitches and bugs, up to and including missing gravestones – which can basically land Sims in purgatory – and other weird happenings.
If you like to keep track of your Sim’s ancestors while playing legacy challenges, then you’re probably going to want your own family plot. You can’t exactly achieve this when you’re missing a headstone for your matriarch, or for dear old uncle Mortimer.
That’s where LittleMsSam’s Release All Ghosts & Get Urn for mod is super useful. Using this, you can generate an urn or headstone for any deceased Sim. Be careful to make sure you also grab the XML Injector at the same time though, otherwise it won’t work.
UI Cheats Extension
Cheating in The Sims 4 can be a drag. Console cheats are cumbersome, and sometimes they just don’t work the way you want them to.
This mod helps to make (some) cheats streamlined and easy, while also making it possible to achieve some cheats that weren’t possible before. The UI Cheats Extension by weerbesu makes cheating away pesky moodlets and racing through broken Aspirations quite literally as easy as the click of a button.
I love this mod less so for the express purpose of cheating gameplay, so much as to fix any bugged aspects of The Sims 4 – of which there are plenty. For example, if you’re hosting an event and an activity won’t tick off even though you’ve definitely done it, several times at that, then being able to click to clear it using this mod saves me a lot of sanity.
Animal immortality mods

Look, I’m a softy. I’m yet to find the perfect mod that makes all animals immortal, but a few I like to fall back on include:
- Simularity’s no dying livestock mod
- Sims4me’s rabbits don’t age and foxes don’t die mods
- CrucibleGaming’s pet immortality trait
You can also work some magic with the aforementioned MCCC mod.

Toni is a writer, content creator, and simulation fanatic. He started playing The Sims 1 in the early 2000s when expansion packs still only cost a fiver and the inflatable sofas were contemporary.
