How To Set Up A Printer On Your Mac 9
Tip
Hey
Installing and using printers is a funny subject on a Mac. I always get a response that printers won’t work, they are hard to install etc. The truth is that installing a printer on a Mac is a lot simpler than you may think. Like most tricks on a Mac you need to know the method, it is then simple to replicate. As well as this I will also show you one of the coolest printer tricks I have ever found.
To install a printer (USB in my case, although other methods are just as simple) plug in your printer to your computer. Plug your printer into the wall socket and then switch it on. Simply wait a couple of seconds as the printer starts up and you are done. No bones about it. You can view printer information from System Preferences > Print & Fax.
If you want to change the settings of your printer, such as driver used, the best way is to click the small plus at the bottom of the list on the left hand side and re-add your printer using the different driver settings. You can’t change the driver (in my case) using the options button. As well as this you also get a choice to add printers from other computers, IP address and other sources. Once as you have everything set up you can then use the printer.
Pooling Printers
One of the coolest features of the printer interface is to pool printers. Pooling printers is very useful if you have a large bank of printers in a room and you want to access the first available printer. For example you could have a Mac Mini in a room connected to all of your laser printers by pooling every one would see just one printer instead of 4 or 5. That Mac Mini would act as a mini printer server.
To set up pooling select your printers (make sure you install all of them first). Then in the main part of the window press “Create Printer Pool”. Add a name in the pop up window. It will then appear in the printer window as a normal printer.
The final step is to make sure printer sharing is switched on. Click the check box to share that will appear in in the printer pane. As well as this make sure that you have enabled printer sharing in your Firewall. You can turn this on by going to System Preferences > Sharing > Printer Sharing. If all goes well you can then print to the pool and it will come out of the first available printer.
Conclusion
Hopefully if you have followed this post correctly you should have set up your printer correctly. You can’t really go wrong. But if you have please leave a comment below.
Where To Next?
9 Responses to “How To Set Up A Printer On Your Mac”
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Try setting up a Lexmark X6570 that has wifi printing on it. The most important thing to remember is you have to drop your firewall to set it up.
Comment By Alex on October 8th, at 3:04 am
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Greetings. I am having difficulty setting up a shared hp psc 1210 on my macbook linked to my wife’s printer on her windows machine. The printer is hard wired to the windows pc and is shared via a Belkin wireless router. I am using Leopard. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks
Comment By Richard on October 8th, at 8:33 am
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@Alex. Why do you need to drop your firewall?
@Richard. You need to make sure printer sharing is on, on the Windows machine. Then add a new printer and select the Windows tab that comes up. I hope this helps.
Comment By admin on October 8th, at 1:29 pm
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There was some complications when I was adding a shared printer to my OS X install that was shared on a Windows Vista machine. After upgrading said machine from XP Pro to Vista and trying to add the printer in the same way, it just refused to share the printer and allow me to add it on my OS X install.
Here are the steps to get it working:
Vista Settings:
If you are having a similar issue, you can try using LPD printing via these steps:
1.Navigate to the Windows Vista Control Panel
2.Go to the “Programs and Features” pane
3.Click on “Turn Windows Features on or off”
4.Turn on the LPD protocol and make sure that all desired printers are set to be sharedYou’ll also need to follow these steps on the Vista Machine
1.Click Windows Visa Start Orb
2.In search box, type “regedit” and return
3.Once regedit opens, click File -> export to make a backup copy
4.Navigate to ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlLsa.
5.n the right pane, right-click the “LmCompatibilityLevel” key and select “modify”
6.Change the value from 3 to 1
7.Exit regedit and you should now be able to properly authenticate to your Mac OS X (or other Samba) share.These are the steps follow on OS X side of things
1) Open System preferences
2) Print & fax
3) Add a printer and go to IP
4) Protocol choose Line Printer Daemon – LPD
5) In Address just the ip where the printer is e.g 192.168.1.1 nothing more
6) In Queue the printer share name (make sure that is correct or will not work)
7) In Name choose whatever you want
8) Put the same name that you put in Queue
9) Choose the correct print driver for your printer
10) You are done try printing…Comment By Mark on October 8th, at 6:12 pm
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Thanks Mark. I don’t have a Windows computer so I can’t really test it out.
Comment By admin on October 8th, at 6:37 pm
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please help i have my epson 2100 installed but don’t seem to be able so set it to print my photos as they look on screen the print preview shows they all have lost colour and look saturated thank you for any sugestions
Comment By jo Fisher on December 17th, at 11:21 pm
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@Jo look through the print settings in the output dialogue box.
Comment By admin on December 18th, at 9:48 pm
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I have a Dell V505 and when I try to install it, my Imac identified it but I was not able to find the driver for it and hence was not able to install it.
Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.
Comment By Peter on March 1st, at 10:22 am
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Try lexmark 5600-6600 driver for mac osx. Dell V505 is a lexmark printer !
Comment By GRONG on April 20th, at 9:54 pm