Share Connected Printers with other Macs

0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can share connected printers from our Mac with other people on our network. If you have a USB printer on your Mac, what you can do is you can share that printer with other people on your network. Let’s see how this is done. Let’s go to my Mac. In order to share a printer, the first thing you need to do, obviously, is to connect it to your computer. So I have a printer connected to my computer, what I would like to do is I would like to share this with other people on my network being that is connected to my computer, the only way that they can print to it is if I unplug it, and then plug it into their computer.

0:37
Well, what we can do on the Mac is share that printer on the network through our Mac. So how do we do this? Well, all we need to do is just go up to our Apple menu here, we need to go to our System Preferences. So I go to my Apple Menu, and then we go over to System Preferences. From here, what we need to do is go to our sharing preference pane. When I select this, you go over to printer sharing. When you select this, what you’re going to see is all of the printers that are connected to your Mac. So I have these two printers here connected to my Mac, what I would like to do is share these with other people that are on my network. Maybe I have another Mac on my network, I want it to be able to print to these two printers. Well, all I need to do is just select them. And when I select them, you’re going to see that it automatically selects printer sharing.

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Now what’s going to happen is anyone else on another Mac is going to be able to print to these printers, it’s going to print through my computer. Now this does not work for iPads and iPhones. If you have an iPad or an iPhone, they will still not be able to print to these two printers. But what it does do is it allows other Macs on the same network to print to these printers, all they have to do is just open up a document go to print, and then they’ll be able to find these printers. Now you do need to have your computer running in order for this to work.

2:01
If I were to shut down this computer, who would not be able to print because it’s printing through my computer. So if my computer is shut down, it will not be able to print to it. And again, this will not work for iPads and iPhones. So that’s how we can share printers that are connected to a Mac with other people on our network. Basically, all we have to do is just go to our System Preferences, we go over to sharing and then you’re going to see printer sharing select that select your printers and as long as that computer is on any other Mac on your network is going to be able to print to those printers, those printers that are connected to your Mac. So that’s how we can share our printers that are connected to our Mac with other people on our network.