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Macmaps: Known compatible printers through Ventura
 

Changes

July 5, 2023 Added AirPrint link.

Added Monterey and Ventura sections.

June 8, 2021 Updated Big Sur listing.  Added resetting printing system, adding new printer directions from Apple to critical notes.  Added Open source printer addition to each OS heading above.

February 4, 2021 Added Big Sur info.

January 10, 2021 Editing changes. Big Sur compatibility listing.

April 15, 2020 Editing changes.

February 8, 2020 Added section for Catalina, Mac OS  10.15.

September 30, 2018 Some printers are coming in as incompatible with Mojave (10.14) on Apple Support Communities. Printer and scanner updates for Mojave posted.

January 27, 2016 fixes two more printer driver links on Apple's download page to support El Capitan. I've indicated the latest release date of drivers that I could find. September 30, 2015, 10.11 was released, and older drivers may not work with it. Check with the manufacturer for your individual printer driver to see if they have a download for El Capitan, even if the download below was dated before El Capitan. They may have already tested the software with El Capitan. If they have, you may have to download the driver directly from the manufacturer. Such was the case with the Canon Pixma MX922. Its driver was from February 2015, and yet, labelled on Canon's website as El Capitan compatible. Downloading it direct from there, and it works. The scanner though will not appear on Image Capture anymore, and you have to download the Canon IJ drivers separately on 10.11 and 10.11.1, though this does not support the Automatic Document Feeder. 10.11.2 fixes this issue. When you Option click Add driver in Apple menu ->System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners to add drivers, you will sometimes get the printer or scanner that already is plugged in as a driver. In those instances, you can use the drivers that are old. I have started an Apple Support Communities thread to discuss this issue. As it happens I also joined Apple's bugreporter program and they informed me it was fixed with 10.11.2. As I had just upgraded to 10.11.3, I went to check if it had been fixed and now the document feeder reappears in Image Capture. As also mentioned in the thread, under some circumstances, you can download the driver from the manufacturer which is stated to be 10.11 compatible and install it from there, even if the driver is not newer than El Capitan's release. So always check both Apple and the manufacturer for updated drivers even if it is not available from Apple, and install its latest driver.

Others have found going as far back as 10.9's scanner driver to help their Canon MP630. Unfortunately as long as printer and scanner developers fail to supply Apple with updates, you may or may not be in for a rude awakening trying to use your peripheral with El Capitan. Lastly, other issues with 10.11 over prior operating systems are covered on my Upgrade FAQ.
 

This page has direct links to many of the printer vendors Mac OS X information page, as well as solutions to changes in the Mac OS X operating system that aren't supported by the printer vendors, yet supported by open source programmers. Note, this list is by no means comprehensive. If you find a printer that supports Mac OS X not listed here, please e-mail me from my guestbook page.

January 19, 2019: Added link for Konica. September 30, 2018: Add Mac OS 10.14 Mojave drivers section
March 12, 2016: Found more compatible printers for El Capitan both from vendors not on Apple's download list, and Apple's download list, and addressed those on the initial list.
January 27, 2016: Lexmark & Epson add drivers directly on Apple's download page.
December 8, 2015: Apple fixes Image Capture's support of Canon MX922 scanning, and possibly other multifunction scanner support with the release of 10.11.2
November 3, 2015: Canon adds drivers on Apple's download page for Laser printers.
October 8, 2015: Brother adds drivers directly on Apple's download page.
October 8, 2015: Added dates next to printers on Apple's support section of printers, as downloads that were after 10.11's release did not coincide with its release. December 6, 2013: HP All In One scanning issues with Mavericks added to the vendor page section.
December 5, 2013: Updated header bullet list to include Apple's downloads for specific vendor drivers.
August 26, 2010: Added PCL 6 PC/XL Ricoh Aficio MP1600Le info.
September 2, 2009: Added Dymo's Macintosh pages.
August 31, 2009: Added Apple's listing of compatible 10.6 printers.
February 6 2008: Added Okidata 10.5 drivers to vendor pages for the C3300 and C3400
January 2: Alps printer drivers added to Vendor page
December 22, 2007: Canon MX700 drivers sensitive to old HP drivers added to critical notes
December 10: Lexmark Support page info from Apple added under Vendor specific page.
December 6: HP support added for C8150, C8180, C8183, and C8150 under vendor specific drivers for Leopard (10.5)
December 4: Added link to Apple compatible printers for Mac OS X 10.5 under Critical Notes
October 14: Added USBTB to the Parallel printing solutions.
May 24: Added HP compatibility note with 10.4.9 under the Critical Notes section.
January 6, 2007: Added Apple Stylewriter section
August 13: Added Brother Critical note for Tiger
August 2: Added ESP Print Pro to Vendor page. Over 5300 crossplatform printer drivers
May 20: Added Epson 740 Print Jobs stop issue to Epson section in manufacturer.
May 18: Added note about Samsung printers in vendor section
May 5: Added second Apple Classic printing article
March 27: Added link to Apple's Classic printing knowledgebase article
January 23, 2005: Added serial printing guide to Mac OS X
September 21, 2004: Added unofficial listing of known compatible printers with Airport Express and Extreme in vendor section
September 17: Added HP All in one Classic printer help page in Vendor section
September 5: Added Thermal Printer drivers link from Peninsula Group in Vendor section
July 15: Added Raster supported printers by Mac OS X 10.3 to Raster Image Processor section
April 25: Added Airport printing troubleshooting page under Helpful Utilities.
April 15: Added Printfab and Proofmaster Adesso links under RIP utilities
March 14: Added link under vendor section to Apple's instructions for setting up printers under Mac OS X, added suggestion for using a second user to setup a printer under the Helpful Utilities section.
February 7: Added Printer Setup Repair for 10.3.x, and modified Print Center Repair to indicate it is for 10.2.x and lower in the Helpful Utilities section
. February 3: Added to Utilities section All in One Communications application resetter for HP printers.
January 27: Files to delete if nothing else works is added to helpful utilities section
January 26: Added next to Lexmark's link an important note about Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)
January 24: Updated links within pages above
January 20, 2004: Put RIP solutions on page.
November 9, 2003: Added Allosx's Panther Printing Fix
September 8: Added Minolta
July 24: Added Keyspan's Parallel printer adapter
April 6: Added Turboprint (now called Printfab)
March 19: Added Ricoh printer info
March 2: Added HP RIP driver info
December 22, 2002: Added info on Mac OS X 10.2.3
December 12: Updated Canon's Printer page link to current one, added Print Center Repair link
December 11: Added Epson RIP and Colormatching drivers for Mac OS X, and HP AIO 10.2.2 workaround
November 23: Added Alps printer drivers
November 17: Added new HP printer support from Linuxprinting.org
November 14: Added new links Apple, Brother, and Samsung drivers, and appended those vendor links with Guten-print (formerly known as gimp-print) drivers.
September 2: Added vendor page, Apple's new printer guide.
August 25: Added Gimp Print infoNov 22, 2023
This page is arranged into the following sections:

Vendor specific updates

Apple recommends for all printers, if a printer fails, reset the printing system.

Printers not listed above have El Capitan drivers available directly from their vendors, as listed below:

HP - http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04473034 has more direct info about compatible printers on their support documents page including 10.11 compatibility.

Canon has this page to find if your printer is El Capitan Compatible:

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/self-help-center/Mac-OSX-Compatibility/

Kodak has a generic 7.9 driver for all in one printers and El Capitan: http://support.en.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17378/selected/true

Dell's listing is here: http://www.dell.com/support/Article/us/en/19/SLN299394/EN

Samsung gave me the Yosemite & El Capitan printers via their online support chat, as they have not made a specific page for these:

Sl-C1810, Sl-C1860, SL-C410, SL-M2020, Sl-M2070, SL-M2835, SL-M2875, SL-M2885

Ventura links Mac OS 13.0

  • Airprint - May 8, 2023 support for wireless printer configurations
  • Brother
  • Canon
  • Epson - search your individual printer to determine if Ventura support is present.
  • HP (Samsung too) - same as Epson, individual device will give compatibility with Ventura.
  • Konica.
  • Okidata
  • Xerox

Monterey links Mac OS 12.0

Big Sur links Mac OS 11.0

Additional links can be found in the Catalina pages on the next section by model.   Not all Catalina support is available for Big Sur.
Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

Catalina, Mac OS 10.15

10.15 Catalina manufacturer links.:

Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

Mac OS 10.14 Mojave

Third party update pages for Mojave have been added below:

Scanner drivers through Silverfast.

Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

10.11 El Capitan updates.

Brother (Oct 8, 2015),

Canon Laser (Nov 3, 2015)

Epson January 27, 2016

Lexmark (Jan 27, 2016)

Xerox/Fuji (January 27, 2016)

Gestetner Printer (January 27, 2016)

Infotec (Januay 27, 2016)

Lanier (January 27, 2016)

Savin (January 27, 2016)

Ricoh (January 27, 2016)

NRG (January 27, 2016)

Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

Critical Notes

Most common printing issues, can be resolved with Apple's directions to reset the printing system.

New printers are added using Apple's directions.

William Huisking discovered on Apple Discussions that his MX700 drivers would not work with old HP drivers installed in 10.4.11. He had to delete all remnants of HP folders from his various Library folders in System -> Library, Hard drive -> Library, and User -> Library. If you find you have a similar issue, I'd report this to Canon and let them know so they can find out what drivers conflict with the existing HP drivers.

Apple has released a listing of all the included printer drivers for Mac OS X 10.5 on knowledgebase article 306684

A system administrator named Sinjin Lindbeck contacted HP technical support and discovered that repairing permissions would fix this problem they described to me that exists with 10.4.9:
"If running OS 10.4.9 and your HP printers, scanners, etc start losing print jobs into the ether or fail intermittently, perform a repair disk permissions to eliminate the problem. I spent about 4 hours on my own and finally called HP. They said it was a problem with their drivers and 10.4.9. Just thought I'd share." Repair permissions is found in Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility.

If you have a printer issue which was resolved please state the issue that was resolved, the printer model, the operating system version, and how it was resolved in the guestbook.


With the release of Panther (Mac OS X 10.3), many of these printer drivers may no longer work. Double check with the manufacturer to make sure the printer is still supported. Apple included many new printer drivers with Panther which may work better. Check if your printer vendor is listed on the installer of Panther, and make sure that any older versions of the printer drivers are removed before installing the Panther printer drivers.

Please Note: Print Center has a new name under Mac OS X 10.3. It is called Printer Setup Utility. It can also be activated under Mac OS X 10.3 through Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Print and Fax -> Printing -> Setup Printers. Instructions below relating to Print Center should work most of the time in Print Setup Utility
Note Guten print (formerly known as gimp-print) and linuxprinting drivers do not support double sided printing on all printers and may also have trouble printing directly from Adobe applications, though you can print using the preview application after making a preview of your print job.
At this time it is unknown if Printfab drivers have any limitations over what is supported by the makers of these printers.

It was found that the Tiger (with Mac OS X 10.4) driver for the Brother HL-2070 works for HL-2040 printer whose drivers don't come with Tiger.

Ricoh Aficio MP1600Le PCL 6/PC XL in 10.6

On Apple Discussions, a user had trouble with a Ricoh Aficio MP1600Le in printing. The following suggestion was offered by another user:The drivers from the Ricoh site are for those printers that have the optional PostScript module installed. Your description would indicate that the PostScript module is most likely not installed. You will need to determine the printer languages that your printer can understand. You do this by printing a configuration page from the printer. If the configuration page shows that it can understand PCL 6/PCL XL, then you can install the pxlmono drivers for Mac OS X from Linux Foundation. Be sure to also download and install Foomatic-RIP and Ghostscript.

This may help if you have printer that meets the same standards.
 

RIP (Raster Image Processor drivers)

Four known raster image processing utilities exist for Mac OS X:
Apple's listing of raster supporting printers lists some built-in support by Apple.
iProof Systems PowerRIP, which are used for some Epson printers. iProof's customer service was recently very poorly rated in the UK by a poster on Apple Discussions. Whether this is an isolated instance or not, it is unknown.
HPs RIP processor software for several of their printers
Print Fab - open source driver based RIP utility. Star RIP from Macartworld is another RIP software.

Helpful Utilities

Apple article 300849 helps explain how to print using the Classic environment, and so does http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh660.html
This Apple article discusses how to troubleshoot printing over a wireless connection with Apple's Airport technology.

Allosx's Panther Printing Fix.
Some issues with existing printers may be resolved with Print Center repair for 10.1.x and 10.2.x, Printer Setup Repair for 10.3.x.
Among the improvements listed for Mac OS X 10.2.3 which may solve HP printing problems:
"Improves compatibility for the HP Communications application."
"Printing and Print Center Enhancements
* Improves ability of Print Center to automatically find and add USB printers.
* Enhances default printer selection process after network printers have automatically been added.
* Printers configured with a Rendezvous name are now selectable from a Print dialog window.
* Improves notifications when a job cannot be printed due to a stopped print queue."
You can download 10.2.3 update to 10.2, 10.2.1 or update to 10.2.2 and install to see if it makes a difference for you.
HP has also released a utility called aioscript.sit to reset the All in One driver Communications application in case it has a fit.

Files to delete

When all else fails one suggestion that appeared on Apple's discussion board is to delete the com.apple.print files in the following folders:
/Library/Preferences/ByHost
/Users/yourusernamehere/Library/Preferences
/Users/yourusernamehere/Library/Preferences/ByHost
If that is done, it may be necessary to repair permissions to achieve a stable system and possibly reinstall the printer drivers if they aren't working.
To repair permissions open: Hard Drive -> Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility -> First Aid -> select hard drive in Disk Utility window and click on Repair Permissions. Note, this option is not available in Mac OS X 10.1.4 or earlier. Mac OS X 10.1.5
does not have this option in Disk Utility, though does have a Repair Privileges utility which achieves the same goal.


Vendor pages



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