Printing also allows you to preserve documents and avoid future dead links. It can also let you take breaks from your screen.
If you’re new to Mac, you may not know how to print right away. We’ve written this guide to show you how to print on a MacBook, iMac, or any other kind of Mac with ease.
Getting Set Up to Print on a Mac
The first step to printing anything from your Mac is to have a Mac and have a printer. We have a guide to setting up and using printers with your Mac that should help you get that sorted out.
Once your printer is good to go, you need something to print. You can print from most applications on your Mac, so your options for this are quite large.
You could print a text document from Pages or Word, an article you read on Safari, or a recipe you typed up or found on Google Chrome. You could print a PDF from Preview, or a spreadsheet from Excel or Numbers.
How to Print Anything on a Mac
Once you know what you want to print, actually printing is really simple. In the document or on the page you want to print, click on File > Print in the menu bar. Or, hit Cmd + P in almost any Mac app.
The Print menu will open. Select the printer you intend to print from in the Printer dropdown menu and then click on Print. Whatever you want to print should start printing right away!
How to Print Multiple Copies From Your Mac
Some printers also act as copiers. If yours doesn’t, or you don’t want to have to set that feature up, you can print multiple copies of whatever it is you want to print from the Print menu on your Mac.
Open the Print menu by clicking File > Print or hit Cmd + P on your keyboard.
Click on the up arrow beside the Copies box to increase the number of copies you want to print at once, or type in the number of copies you want into the box.
From there, just click Print to start printing that many copies.
If you want to print on both sides of the paper while printing multiple copies, check out our guide to printing double-sided on a Mac for the steps to make that happen.
How to Print to Different Paper Sizes on a Mac
Most of the time your Mac will assume you’re printing to Letter size printer paper—paper that is 8.5 by 11 inches.
If you want to print to Legal size paper (8.5 by 14 inches), or to photo paper (4 by 6 inches), you’ll need to adjust some settings on your Mac before you hit Print.
In the Print menu of Mac-based applications, you’ll need to hit the Show Details button on the left side of the menu, below the print preview.
From here, select the paper size you’re going to print to in the Paper Size dropdown menu.
If you don’t see Paper Size, and instead see a dropdown menu marked Pages, click on that and select Paper Handling.
Check the Scale to fit paper size box, and select the paper size you’re printing to from the Destination Paper Size menu that is now available below it.
Make sure your non-Letter-sized paper is put into your printer correctly, and click Print to print off whatever it is you’re printing!
How to Pause or Cancel Printing on a Mac
It’s easy to start printing something like a poster and suddenly realize it has a big typo in it. Thi is a nightmare if you’ve just started printing 50 copies of it, too. It’s also easy to click Print on something and to suddenly notice you need to put paper in your printer.
Thankfully you can cancel or pause a print job to correct any errors and start printing again when you’re ready.
To cancel or pause whatever you’re printing, you’ll need to open the printer window. You open this window by clicking on the printer icon that appears in your Dock when you start printing something.
If you don’t see the printer icon in your Dock, it’s likely the print job has already finished. You can open the printer window in advance by going to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, selecting your printer, and clicking on Open Print Queue.
To pause a print, click the Pause button in the top-right area of the printer window, or to the right of the print job. Your printer will stop wherever it is in the print. This is your chance to put more paper in your printer or to fix a potential jam in the works.
To start printing a paused job again, click the Resume button, which replaces the Pause button in the top-right part of the printer window.
If you need to make changes to the document you’re printing, you’ll need to cancel that print job and send it to the printer again after making your changes.
To cancel a print job altogether, in the printer window click the X to the right of your print job. Your printer will stop printing altogether, feeding out any paper it started printing on without completing the page.
To restart a stopped job, you’ll have to head back to the application you’re printing from and hit Print again. You won’t be able to restart from the printer window.
How to Print to PDF on Your Mac
Maybe you’d like to save a document or webpage as a PDF before you print it. Or you’d like to just save it as a PDF, and not print it at all.
There’s no need to open Word or Preview first. You can save anything as a PDF right from the Print menu of Mac-based applications.
To “print” anything into a PDF format, open the Print menu and click the down arrow on the PDF menu.
Click on the Save as PDF option. You’ll be given the option to name the PDF and select where it’s saved to on your Mac. Click Save when you’re done with that, and you’ll find the PDF exactly where you wanted it.
Printing From a Mac Is Easy as Pie
We’re confident this guide will have helped you to see how simple it is to print from your Mac. With just a few clicks you can have a document or article in your hands—or saved as a PDF.
We hope you learned a lot and get a lot of use out of your Mac and printer. Good luck in all of your printing endeavors!
