I recently had to reinstall my Ventura operating system. I migrated my information from a time machine back up manually, and I did not get my printer settings back. By printer settings, I mean draft, duplex, color, HD etc. Where are printer settings stored so that I could go into my back up and restore those settings to the Mac.
iMac (2017 – 2020)
If you have saved a custom preset, they are saved as plist files in your Preferences folder. For example, let's say your printer is named Home Printer. Look in /Users/<your_account_name>/Library/Preferences. There will be a file named com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.Home_Printer.plist (obviously, the name will match your actual printer name as this is an example). Copy the plist from the old machine to the new machine and place it in the same place.
If you are not referring to custom presets, then perhaps you mean that you are missing the driver which delivers a PPD. If this is what you are looking for, then go to the vendor's web site and download the latest driver installer for your printer. This will provide all the printing support needed. Note, for most modern printers that are AirPrint compatible, you should not need a driver pack.
Hope this is what you are looking for.
If you have saved a custom preset, they are saved as plist files in your Preferences folder. For example, let's say your printer is named Home Printer. Look in /Users/<your_account_name>/Library/Preferences. There will be a file named com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.Home_Printer.plist (obviously, the name will match your actual printer name as this is an example). Copy the plist from the old machine to the new machine and place it in the same place.
If you are not referring to custom presets, then perhaps you mean that you are missing the driver which delivers a PPD. If this is what you are looking for, then go to the vendor's web site and download the latest driver installer for your printer. This will provide all the printing support needed. Note, for most modern printers that are AirPrint compatible, you should not need a driver pack.
Hope this is what you are looking for.
Thank you for the quick reply. Yes, it is the custom presets that I was looking for and I found them in a Time Machine backup. I replaced all of the printer plists and still I am not showing the presets when I open the printer. I opened the com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.MY PRINTER_Printer.plist with Xcode and all of my previous settings are there but they will not load.
I guess I have to create new settings.
Where are printer settings stored?
