Enable Desktop Printing

From Mac Guides

In the pre-Mac OS X days, Mac OS had a useful feature called "Desktop Printing", which was available from System 7 onwards. Although Desktop Printing can appear to be mostly absent in Mac OS X, it can be re-enabled very easily. Desktop Printers allow dragging and dropping of documents, and monitoring the progress of a particular print job. Double clicking the printer opens up the printer application with more detail.

Contents 1 Enabling Desktop Printing 1.1 Method 1 1.2 Method 2 2 Disabling Desktop Printing

Enabling Desktop Printing

Method 1

1. Open Printer Setup Utility in your Utilities folder
2. Select a printer from the list
3. Select "Create Desktop Printer" from the Printers menu.

It gives you the option to save the "printer" and defaults to the desktop. Naturally, it may be saved in other places.

Method 2

1. Navigate to ~/Library/Printers (command-shift-G in Finder)
2. Command-option-drag the desired printer to the desktop to create an alias.

Disabling Desktop Printing

Since Desktop Printing is nothing more than an alias of the printer application on your desktop, it can be easily disabled by deleting the alias.