AirPrint Troubleshooting

AirPrint, a feature that lets you print from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, is a wonderful thing, and a great convenience, except when it doesn’t work. This article will provide some troubleshooting guidance for resolving AirPrint problems.

As an introduction, AirPrint uses a proprietary Apple communications service called BonJour, which works over your Wi-Fi connection. The most common AirPrint issues thus involve “breaking” BonJour.

If AirPrint has been working and suddenly stopped, there are several things to check (see below if it has never worked):

• Update iOS to the latest version for your iPhone
• If you have VPN installed (whether you are using it or not), and you have just updated iOS, changed devices, or changed VPN settings, delete the VPN profile from Settings/General/VPN & Device Management/VPN and also delete the VPN app. If this fixes the problem, you can try reinstalling VPN.

• Next, Make sure your iPhone and printer are connected to the SAME Wi-Fi or wired network (this is a more common issue that you may realize).

• Check the Wi-Fi band (2.4, 5 or 6 GHz) the printer is connected to; very few printers support 6 GHz, and many don’t support 5 GHz either.

• Try “Forgetting” your Wi-Fi connection, then reconnect.

If you don’t have VPN installed and they are on the same network, the next step is to restart the BonJour service on all devices:

• power off the printer
• Power off your iPhone
• Restart your router by unplugging it for 15 seconds (many newer routers have no true power switch)
• Wait until the router is ready, which can take several minutes
• Turn on your iPhone
• Connect the iPhone to the Wi-Fi network if it doesn’t automatically connect
• Power on the printer and wait for it to connect to Wi-Fi and verify that it connected to the same network via its control panel.

These steps restart the BonJour network that supports AirPrint, and will usually resolve any AirPrint issues. You probably don’t need to do all of them, but following these steps is usually less work than finding the one that is causing the problem.

• If these steps don't work you should also check with the printer manufacturer for a firmware update for the printer. Apple periodically updates Bonjour to improve security, and the current printer firmware may not be compatible with the latest Bonjour version until it is updated. You can usually update the firmware from the printer’s control panel; with some printers, turn the printer off for several minutes to an hour, then turn it on. As it powers up it may check for updates. With the iOS 17 update it is known that Epson and Canon printers must be on the latest version of their firmware to work with AirPrint.

If AirPrint has never worked

If you have never been able to use AirPrint here’s what to check.

• Make sure your printer is AirPrint enabled; you can check from this list→About Airprint
• Make sure your printer firmware is up to date (from the printer control panel or management app)
• Make sure your iPhone and printer are connected to the same Wi-Fi network
• Check router settings to verify that the “ports” used by BonJour are not blocked; it needs ports: 1900, 5350, 5351, 5352, 5353
• Note that by default these ports are “open” on all routers, unless someone has disabled them intentionally.

Then repeat the steps above:

• power off the printer
• Power off your iPhone
• Restart your router by unplugging it for 15 seconds (many newer routers have no true power switch)
• Wait until the router is read, which can take several minutes
• Turn on your iPhone
• Connect the iPhone to the Wi-Fi network if it doesn’t automatically connect
• Power on the printer and wait for it to connect to Wi-Fi

If you have a printer that is not AirPrint compatible there are 3rd party apps you can install on your computer to allow AirPrint to work through your computer. One for Macs is Printopia, another is O’Print for Windows.