How Do I Delete/Edit Gutenprint Drivers That Are Bundled With Yosemite

All printer drivers are located in the /Library/Printers/ folder. Be sure you know whether deleting folders there will have an unexpected result. Normally, Yosemite does not install any printer drivers except a small handful. Instead it waits to detect your printer when it is connected and turned on then offers to download the driver. Gutenprint drivers don't come from Apple, and the Yosemite installer does not install them. More likely they were left there by a prior installation or download.

I do not use the GutenPrint package, so I do not know where they store their drivers. Yosemite comes with Canon and Epson drivers which together probably number in the hundreds. Same with Gutenprint. But there is really no need to delete unused drivers. Once you set a driver you forget it. Not like you have to find a new driver each time you print. And, if you use the search field when selecting a driver you can reduce the choices substantially.

You can download the freeware, EasyFind 4.9.3, and use it to search for the drivers. Search starting with "gutenprint" or "gimpprint"

Visit the website for the GIMP Print drivers and ask them the question. There are just users here. No such thing as level 3 help unless you call Apple. But they will not help you with third-party products.

If you can't find anything with Easy Find, then you are not using the right search term. Try looking in the /Home/Library/Logs/ folder and see if you find anything helpful there.

For Yosemite, the list of printer models that you see in the Printer Software window is determined by the files installed in /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources.

Also, on older versions of OS X that includes Apple printers, these PPDs were located in /System/Library/Printers.

As for Gutenprint, the included documentation mentions the PPDs being copied to /usr/share/cups/model/gutenprint. But checking that folder shows no sign of any PPD that is appearing in the Printer Software window.

Elsewhere in the Gutenprint documentation it is written that the package includes "A CUPS driver for generating PPD files on the fly, gutenprint.5.2. This is used to generate PPD files on the fly with CUPS 1.2 or above, avoiding the need for storing large numbers of PPD files in the filesystem. This is normally installed in /usr/lib/cups/driver". Checking the /usr/lib folder there is no cups folder. So the documentation does not appear to apply to Yosemite.

michebre wrote:

I then installed the latest GutenPrint Driver Package 5.2.10a and found a relevant driver for my printer, which works great!

I want to get rid of the remaining 200 or so extra drivers from other mfrs. that aren't relevant to me.

Apparently Cups+Gutenprint installs its Print drivers in Yosemite in another place other than the usual Library > Printers. There are no Printer drivers in this location because I deleted/trashed them all prior to installing the updated Cups+GutenPrint Driver 5.2.10a package.

I am trying to find where GutenPrint installs these packaged drivers to., what location on my Yosemite Hard drive in order to be able to go in and remove all of them that are not relevant.

If you are using the Gutenprint drivers, you will see a lot of other printers being supported. Gutenprint supports somewhere around 1200 printers. The Gutenprint package does not install a "driver" for each and every printer. It uses a combination of about 3 files in total to produce a PPD for your printer. You cannot delete any of those files. And there is really no need to do so. They aren't that large. The total size for the three files that are used to create the PPDs is about 5MB.

Some of the other drivers you mentioned in your original post are actually part of the printing system CUPS.

EDIT: None of the files that Gutenprint installs are in the /Library/Printers folder. All files are in the hierarchy of the system under the /usr/libexec/cups and /usr/share/gutenprint directories. They are all hidden from normal use. Please do not try to delete or edit any of these files unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you want to delete the Gutenprint drivers, there is an uninstaller that comes in the same disk image as the drivers.