Some people come to me to print up something from their phones. Usually an email that I ask them to forward to me and I print it up from there. I wanted to find a way to print directly from an Android and with a little research I did.
I tried printing to my Canon (MG2525) printer. Even though it is shared through my network I couldn't get my phone to pick it up. Luckily my Uncle gave me his old printer. He mainly used it to copy things, got some error message, decided to buy a new printer and gave this one to me. The only issue I found it was out of black ink.
It's a Hp OfficeJet 3830. It has built in wireless support so I tried to connect to it.
You might want to set your phone up for printing first. This is from an older Android Samsung Galaxy J3 but still useful as a guide.
Go into Settings then Connections and then More connection settings.
You might want to enable Nearby device scanning. It was already enabled on mine. Tap on Printing.
Enable Default print service. If you click on Download plugin, you will be taken to the Google Play Store were you can download the print services for your particular brand of printer.
This gives you a few more printing options including showing me what my ink levels are. I downloaded the Canon one but still didn't do anything for me.
My phone picks up the HP one without glitch. So lets say I wanted to print up this article open in chrome. I would first click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the screen. In the menu that drops down I would click on Share...
At first I couldn't get this to work because I couldn't see the Print icon. Swipe the bottom row of icons to the left. If you have your phone in landscape mode, you'll see all the icons.
This now takes me to a preview. At the top in the blue section on my phone, you'll see your printer listed. Tap on the little black triangle to change printers.
Or tap lower on the section to change the settings like what pages and how many copies. When ready tap on the yellow printer icon.
Printing Pictures is a little more straightforward. Just click on the three dots, click on Print. Same procedure for selecting options. And away we go.
