Working with Printers and Scanners

In this lesson for macOS Mojave, I look at the different options we have with printers and scanners on the Mac.

Accessing Print and Scan Preferences
To access the preferences for printing and scanning, you need to open System Preferences under the Apple Menu. In the window that opens, click on Printers & Scanners. On the left will be all the printers and scanners connected to your Mac. At the top of the window is a tab with two options, Print and Scan. Click on the appropriate tab for preferences for your printers and scanners.

Opening the Print Queue and Supplies
To open the Print Queue, click on Open Print Queue. A new window will open showing the print queue for the selected printer. In this window, you can also click on a button to open the options and supplies window. You can also do this from the main preferences.

Default Printer
To set what the default printer is, if you have more than one printer, click on the pulldown for Default Printer. From there you can select a specific printer or choose the last printer used. If you select this option, the default printer will change depending on what printer you’ve last used.

Default Paper Size
This is where you can set the default paper size for your printers.

Printing Documents
To print a document, go under File in the Menu Bar while in your document. You can also use the keyboard shortcut command-P. When you print, a sheet will drop down showing all your printing options. From here you can select which printer you want to use, the options for that printer, how many copies, pages, orientation, and scale. If you don’t see all the options, you can click on Show Details to see them. For a more simplified interface, click on Less Details.

Scanning Documents
If your printer has a scanner, click on the Scanner tab at the top of the Printers & Scanners preference pane. Then click on Open Scanner. A new window will open from the scanner app the scanner uses. From there you will see either a simplified interface with few options or a more detailed interface. To toggle between these two interfaces, click on the Show Details or Hide Details button. Then you are in the detailed interface, you can set the kind, DPI, rotation, name, format, and where the scan is going to be saved. Click on Overview to get an overview, then click on Scan to scan.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.