Diagnosing MAC printer problems

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The printing system on a Mac is a little hard to figure out, so here are a few tips that could help:

  • Make sure you’re on LaunchPad’s network and not connected to a VPN, your phone or another network.  Our printers are only accessible on the physical LAN or ‘Launchpad’ wifi
  • Make sure that the correct driver has been selected when the printer was installed.  If it says ‘AirPrint’ or ‘generic’ then the driver won’t pass your PIN along with the print job.  You’ll need to reinstall it in this case.
  • Go to the printer’s website by typing in the IP address for the printer in Safari.  This will display the printer admin page and you’ll be able to review the job history to see what happened to your print job.
  • Enable CUPS on your Mac.  This gives you a lot more information on diagnosing printer problems.

To enable CUPS

  • Select and copy ‘cupsctl WebInterface=yes’
  • Next, click the magnifying glass in the top right-hand corner of your screen and search for ‘Terminal’.
  • Once in the terminal, paste in ‘cupsctl WebInterface=yes’ and click enter.

Once you have CUPS enabled, you can open the interface by clicking on this URL: http://localhost:631/

When the site opens in the browser, click on ‘Administration’ to see more about your printers.

‘Filter’ failed error

This can occur when the drivers are incompatible with your version of macOS, or the printing system is corrupted for some reason.

  • Reinstall your drivers, paying particular attention to the version of macOSx you have (see this kb article)
  • Try resetting the printing system first: See this Apple Support Article and remember to restart your mac
  • If that fails, check out this article for more information – it’s a bit long and involved.
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