desktop shortcut for printer?

I like to do this too, so here is how to do it.

First, open your Library folder. This is normally hidden on Mavericks, but if you press Option while clicking the Go menu in the Finder, the Library command will appear. Choose it.

In the Library folder, find the Printers folder. This contains all printers you have added to your Mac.

Hold down the Option and Command keys and drag any printer to the desktop. Option-Command-drag creates a shortcut. Now you have a printer shortcut on the desktop.

But I don't like to clutter my desktop, and it's usually hidden by windows. And I never know which printer I want to change. So instead of adding shortcuts to each printer, I added a Printers folder shortcut to the Dock. Now I simply click on my Printers shortcut in the Dock and all my printers pop up and I can click any of them. If you prefer the Desktop to the Dock there's nothing stopping you from creating a Printers folder shortcut on the Desktop.

(Note: If you didn't make shortcuts, the way you would change printer settings is to open System Preferences, click Printers and Scanners, and select your printer. This would display the buttons "Open Print Queue" and "Options & Supplies.")

The main reason for having a desktop printer icon is that it makes a convenient shortcut for printing multiple documents. For example, I needed to print 12 PDF files. I could:

(1) Open and print these one-by-one;

(2) Select all the documents and use the print command or keyboard shortcut to print them all; or

(3) Drag and drop the documents onto the desktop printer icon. This prints the whole bunch using the default print options for that printer.

I find (3) to be quite convenient. It also makes it easy to choose which printer to print a document or group of documents.

Not sure you can. For what reason do you want a icon for the printer on your desktop?