How to Use The Sims 4 Debug Cheat [2024]

When I’m looking for that absolute perfect piece of clutter to put on a sideboard or a gorgeous plant to make my home feel more lived in, I love to use the sims 4 debug cheat menu. You can find some really good stuff, even some that is 100% free because it’s not meant to be purchased by us players.

This debug cheat lets you go into a hidden menu that will let you buy things like fences, flowers, and random items like plates and cups that sims are interacting with when doing tasks.

The cheat you’re going to need for this is bb.showhiddenobjects which you’ll enter into the cheat bar after enabling cheat codes.

How to Use The Sims 4 Debug Cheat

Using the debug cheat is thankfully very straight forward and can be done even by the newest of players. It is even one of the easier to memorize cheats, and is stuck in my brain for the rest of eternity.

The first thing you’ll want to do is open up your cheat dialogue box and enable cheats so that the debug cheat works properly. Then, after you want to type in bb.showhiddenobjects and hit enter and immediately go into buy mode and starting navigating the debug catalogue.

Pro Tip: Sometimes if I enter this cheat while already in the buy menu, I’ll need to go back out of the buy menu into live mode and go back in so the cheat can work.

Navigating The Sims 4 Debug Menu

When I first learned about the debug cheats when EA introduced them years ago, I was so confused on how to use them and how to successfully find things. These cheats have been in the game for years and I’m sure there are still players out there who are confused too.

A collection of random items you

The experience in the debug cheat menus is going to be stressful if you don’t want to use any mods to make it easier. The best thing you’re going to want to do is try and find a specific item that is in the debug section and search specifically for that.

The problem with using the search bar to try and find things is that some items aren’t internally tagged to be searchable which annoys me every single time.

Your only other option in this scenario is to search the word debug in the search bar and just slowly scroll through the menu until you find the specific item or something similar you want to use.

Pro Tip: If you want to be able to see more than two rows of build items at a time to make navigating the sims 4 debug cheat menu easier, you can download the better build buy mod that lets you expand to multiple rows so you can see things easier.

Adding in Live Edit Objects

Once you master the debug catalog you may want to further expand and start adding some of the live edit objects to your sim’s experience too. This catalog has things that you’d find in the world as a whole that aren’t available for you to purchase.

These can include insanely cool decorative items that you’ll find on buildings, cool plants that are huge compared to what we can purchase and tons more.

My personal favourite items you can find in this category are all the decorative cars that I love adding to my sim’s fake driveways to give the illusion that we have drivable worlds in the game.

To add these to your experience you’ll want to use the live edit cheat which is bb.showliveeditobjects and then go into the build catalog, once again these items can appear in the debug search bar.

A collection of items that you <a href=can find when you use the live edit cheat including plants, power lines and more. " width="1024" height="576" />

The Best Mod For Using The Sims 4 Debug Cheat

The best part about The Sims 4 is that pretty much everything can be turned into a mod and the Better Build Buy mod is going to change your life for using the debug cheat menu.

A UI screen from The Sims 4 that says

This mod does a bunch of things for you like naming all debug items, categorizing them and making it so much easier to find them which is life changing for players like me who are constantly in the debug menu trying to find things.

An image of a sim sitting in a chair reading a book while the player is in build mode. There is a red circle around DEBUG in the category menu.

The first thing I can’t live without now is the ability to go into the categories menu and just click on either debug or live edit. This lets you just see everything all at once with no categorization.

The best part about this mod for me is how Twisted Mexi went through and categorized every single item that is available in the debug and live edit cheats. This way you can go into the kitchen and with the debug toggle on you’ll see everything that applies to a kitchen, including:

A bunch of kitchen items that can be found when you use the sims 4 debug cheat.

This is a must-have sims mods for me, especially since you can use it to hit the 1 key and expand your build menu which lets you see five rows instead of two. Doing this makes it so much easier to navigate these menus and find exactly what you’re looking for.

In Summary

Using these different cheats is honestly life changing for players both new and old. Learning how to use the sims 4 debug cheat opens up a whole new world of items for you to play with like florals, plants, decor items and collectibles. Using the bb.showhiddenobjects cheat code is easy, even easier than navigating the actual debug menu!