Show HN: AirPrint Bridge: Enable AirPrint for Non-AirPrint Printers on macOS | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: AirPrint Bridge: Enable AirPrint for Non-AirPrint Printers on macOS

github.com

63 pointseliransapir13 comments

Lightweight, open-source, and fully automated, AirPrint Bridge uses macOS's built-in tools to bridge the gap without relying on external software. Perfect for reviving your trusty old printer!

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I've never understood why nobody ever created a universal standard for talking to printers over any connection (USB or Wi-Fi). We've standardized most other USB peripherals, from mice to webcams to thumb drives, so why can't we standardize printers to require zero drivers?

As a Linux user, I benefit from CUPS for printing, but I still have occasion to manage printers on Windows, and it's a nightmare.

Some vendors care about lock-in, some don't.

For laser printers pcl/ipp is pretty standard afaik. For inkjets it's different because it's consumer hardware and there's no driver.

Airprint is actually surprisingly standard now. There's even feature discovery.

I mean they did… a number of times. Current CUPS and MacOS prefer to use IPP when supported.

However as a de facto standard you can dump postscript or pcl to port 9100 and most good printers will happily oblige you. The problem AirPrint endeavored to solve was already solved when it came along, IMO. Its current problems are solely related to it unnecessarily being a walled garden.

However in the endless quest to make consumer goods cheaper most inexpensive printers that people purchase now interpret everything on the host and the printer interface is low level machine control, as in “move motor” type commands.

Lantronix and others have produced small “print server” gateway devices in the past that run cups and support AirPrint and talk directly to a downstream “dumb” printer.

I had something like this running from a docker container but ultimately I gave up and got an airprint native printer. Its one of those things I just don't want to tinker with when I need

Might be of use, however do I need to keep the mac running? If that's the case I see no benefit over just using the mac itself to print directly.

However, if this could be installed on my linux server, that would be make this really useful.

It continues to work while the Mac is sleeping as long as you have an Apple TV, HomePod, or AirPort Express (as those devices run the bonjour sleep proxy).

I’m working on making the script run seamlessly on Linux as well. The only benefit to Linux is that one probably has an always on server or raspberry pi running 24/7.

The macOS version is good for those that have a Mac that’s plugged in at home even if it’s sleeping. Also resource utilization is 0.0% so not too shabby.

I use a small Linux vm to host cups with AirPrint setup - it lets us use my old laser printer that would otherwise be e waste.

It's super neat. Except for when my wife has random issues printing. Then I fucking hate it.

I shoved a disused Raspberry Pi running cups behind my Laserjet MFP connected over USB. Works great. As a plus, I could install SANE and get network scanning from it, including from the ADF. scanservjs is a nice frontend for that.

https://sbs20.github.io/scanservjs/

I cheated adding power to it by just using a power cable splitter so I could shove a reliable USB power brick up next to the printer.

https://www.amazon.com/Tekit-Splitter-Single-Female-Adapter/...

THANK YOU. I've been looking for something like scanservjs for ages as a web frontend to my network scanner to feed Paperless. For whatever reason I never could find something when I would search. That looks like exactly what I wanted, penciling it in for a weekend project.

I tried this and had too many issues with other devices. I finally just bought a Brother laser printer with built in AirPrint that worked fine for many years but lately it seems to disconnect once in awhile. Current fix for that has been a smart switch that I programmed to just power cycle the printer twice a day.

Eventually I’ll just upgrade to a newer one with color and hopefully better AirPort support, but I’m glad cups and AirPrint works alright since I haven’t tried it in a few years. The issues your wife is experiencing though are likely the same ones that led me to just get a printer that supports it and from what I read at the time Brother has the best AirPrint support (purely anecdotal)

The most egregious problem that I've found is a GhostScript issue with transparent elements in PDFs that makes the printing process take way too long (and use 100% CPU) to start.

https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups-filters/issues/569

Presumably useful in a multicomputer environment with a printer shared across the network, such as an office?

Yep or home especially for printing those return labels from your phone.

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