DevGuy
Level 1 (8 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Bonjour printer does not appear in IOS Printer Options list

I have a home network with a Time Capsule router.

I connected my wireless Cannon MX920 to the network.

The printer works fine from my MacBook Air, my iMac, my Windows 10 laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone.

There are no known pending software updates to any of the devices.

I connected my HP OfficeJet 6500 (E709a) to the MacBook Air via USB and it works fine.

I installed Bonjour on the Windows10 laptop and i can print to the 'OfficeJet @ MacBook Air' printer from the Windows 10 laptop, and the iMac (and of course the MacBook Air) just fine.

In Safari / Bookmarks / Bonjour on the MacBook Air, ONLY the Cannon printer is listed.  The OfficeJet attached directly to it via USB does NOT appear. 

 

My QUESTION is how can i make the 'OfficeJet @ MacBook Air' printer appear as an option in the Printer Options / Recent Printers dialog so I can print to it from my IOS devices?

 

This seems like a pretty straightforward configuration problem and I don't see the need to spent $20 in the App Store to make it work.  I see some postings along the lines of this problem but the solutions are pretty hard to follow and seem to depend on having the printer appear in the Safari / Bookmarks / Bonjour list. 

 

I'll appreciate any solution (or explanation as to why there isn't one)!

Posted on Aug 24, 2016 2:24 PM

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Q: Bonjour printer does not appear in IOS Printer Options list

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  • by Ulexes138,

    Ulexes138 Ulexes138 Aug 25, 2016 9:27 AM in response to DevGuy
    Community Specialists
    Aug 25, 2016 9:27 AM in response to DevGuy

    Hello DevGuy,

    Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Community. I know how useful it can be to have all your devices networked to a central printer, and I'd like to help offer some insight on what might be preventing your from using you iOS devices to print to your HP 6500. 

    In order to Print from an iOS device the printer must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network and support the Air Print feature. After some searching it looks like the HP 6500 does not support this feature directly. You may be able to find an app based solution from HP in the App Store, but this printer does not appear to have Air Print capability based on the support documentation I was able to find from HP.

    For more info on Air Print and a list of known compatible printers, have look at this article: About AirPrint

    If you have any further questions, please reach out again. The whole community is here to help.
    -Best regards
     

  • by DevGuy,

    DevGuy DevGuy Aug 25, 2016 10:43 PM in response to Ulexes138
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 25, 2016 10:43 PM in response to Ulexes138

    Thanks, Ulexes138.

     

    Sadly (in my opinion) i'm saying Thanks for explaining why an Apple thing "just doesn't work". I've bought quite a number of Apple products because "they just work" better than the equivalent Windows-based stuff.  I was thinking my MacBook was acting as a print server (clearly it IS for my iMac and my Windows machine!) and that there would be no good reason why it couldn't work for my IOS devices.  I was hoping maybe I was just missing one of those "configuration profiles" mentioned in the article you referenced.  But after reading the article I still have a very limited understanding of what AirPrint is--other than it seems to mean that the printer must be wifi enabled even it you have it connected directly.  Hey Apple, can you see an opportunity here?

     

    Thanks, again, Ulexes138!

  • by PAHU,Helpful

    PAHU PAHU Aug 31, 2016 11:04 AM in response to DevGuy
    Level 6 (16,610 points)
    Aug 31, 2016 11:04 AM in response to DevGuy

    DevGuy wrote:

     

    In Safari / Bookmarks / Bonjour on the MacBook Air, ONLY the Cannon printer is listed.  The OfficeJet attached directly to it via USB does NOT appear.

    This appears to be a limitation of OS X - and possibly just 10.11 as it is all I have at the moment to test. I found that for any printer that is shared from a Mac, that Mac cannot see the advertised share (i.e. cannot see itself sharing the printer) but other Mac's on the network can see the share - shown as Printer-Name@Mac-Name. And it doesn't matter that it is connected to Mac via USB or if it is networked, it still does not show when using Safari to browse for the printer.

    DevGuy wrote:

     

    My QUESTION is how can i make the 'OfficeJet @ MacBook Air' printer appear as an option in the Printer Options / Recent Printers dialog so I can print to it from my IOS devices?

    In testing this now with my iPhone 6S running 9.3.5 it appears to be another limitation, this time with iOS. I can see all the printers on the network that support Bonjour. But the printer connected to an iMac running 10.11.6 and shared and thus advertised via Bonjour is not visible to the iPhone.

     

    I know that in the past this worked, because it was one workaround for allowing iOS to print to a device that did not support Bonjour. And if you install an app like Printopia on the Mac, then it will make the selected printer appear to iOS so that it can print. Thus I wonder if there has been a change with one of the recent software updates that blocks this type of share. I can test this tomorrow using a different version of OS X to see if 10.11 is the cause rather than iOS.

  • by DevGuy,

    DevGuy DevGuy Aug 31, 2016 11:19 AM in response to PAHU
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 31, 2016 11:19 AM in response to PAHU

    Thank you very much for looking into this, PAHU.  I thought it once worked too.  It's natural that it SHOULD work.  If it can work using an app like Printopia, it's clearly POSSIBLE for Apple to make it work.  Given the cost of Printopia, I'll just have to print on the other printer and go farther to fetch the output (and pretend it's "exercise").  ;-)