Filed under: Peripherals, TUAW Tips, Leopard
TUAW Tip: Auto-quit Printers in Leopard
I just ran across this simple, but handy tip over at Mac OS X Hints. One of the little annoyances of Leopard that didn't make our recent post is the way Leopard handles printers. When you print something it starts the little application that controls the print queue for that device but (unlike Tiger) the application remains on your Dock after the print job is finished. If this annoys you (like it does me), it turns out that there's a simple fix. Just right click on the Dock icon and select "Auto Quit." Now the printer queue application will quit itself (and so disappear from your Dock) once it's finished processing your print job.
I'm not entirely sure why this behavior is not the default (as it was before), but it's a nice little discovery that removes yet another little annoyance.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Yocdub said 8:16AM on 11-13-2007
....But you will all find out that there is a bug in this feature that will show you it DOES NOT auto quit all the time. Once it starts to stay in the dock EVEN with auto quit checked, you will have to go into your Print preferences and Re-setup your printer for the auto quit to start working again. Believe me this gets VERY annoying.
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jigme said 8:20AM on 11-13-2007
nope. as Yocdub reports, it's not playing here - staying open despite the checkmark.
so - when's 10.5.1 coming out?
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jigme said 8:33AM on 11-13-2007
hmm. it just worked.
seems it's intermittent, then - or some other factor i'm ignoring?
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Tom Boucher said 9:10AM on 11-13-2007
Yay. THis was one of those features that annoy me, little open printers on my dock (I have four of them)
Thanks for the tip
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newbill123 said 10:23AM on 11-13-2007
Why don't printers auto-quit by default? Probably because you can adjust the auto-quit setting only when the icon is present. In Leopard, the stay-open behavior is new; it's a feature to some, an annoyance to others, and probably unnoticed by many. It's easier for the annoyed group to explore a static, non-disappearing icon and discover how to make it auto-quit, than it is for the feature-hungry group to explore a quickly disappearing icon to discover how to turn off an auto-quit setting. It's not the number of people demanding the new behavior, but an attempt to make this setting easier to find.
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Johnny said 11:34AM on 11-13-2007
Thanks for pointing out this simple, but useful tip. I totally missed that option and have been annoyed by the printers staying open. I think we're finding (or at least I'm finding) that many of the things I first thought were annoyances in Leopard can be remedied and actually allow more customization (when they work).
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organedhonneur said 11:43AM on 11-13-2007
IIRC, Tiger used to leave the app opened if it the window was activated. Otherwise, it would auto quit.
Speaking of printer, how do change their icons? They are the most horrible piece of UI and changing their ICNS resource doesn't work. Is there something to do?
I miss the old, generic printer app that would animate to show printed pages...
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mjb said 12:31PM on 11-13-2007
the way printing works on leopard is a million times better.
i print stuff continually at work, and the whole way it works is much more efficient. so what if there are a few bugs with the application quitting, it's nothing to cry for 10.5.1 over.
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MacBookOwner said 2:57PM on 11-13-2007
That printer thing was annoying, thanks for the helpful tip!
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imatt said 7:59PM on 11-13-2007
Ugh! Thank you SO MUCH! This annoyed the hell out of me, and I'll be more than a little glad to fix this. Cross one more little annoyance from the upgrade off the list. I'm still pleased with 10.5 over Tiger on the whole though.
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Victo said 1:35PM on 11-16-2007
This was useful. I have this other issue though: a printer is connected to another mac (running tiger) with "printer share" on. When I am on the same network with that mac (and I am using leopard on macbook pro), I can add that printer to my list of printers and print on it. If I take my macbook pro elsewhere, this printer disappears. I have to add it back when I go back to that network. This is very annoying. Anyone knows what the problem might be?
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Tim said 7:08PM on 12-29-2007
Well I dont know why you'd want to close the printer queue. It makes it so much easier than opening an application to just drop a document on it in the doc to print. Much faster than waiting for the app to open....plenty of room in the dock for everybody....
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Tim said 7:10PM on 12-29-2007
To keep the queue in the dock, right-click it and "Keep in Dock". To open the queue without printing anythinf, launch from System Prefs>Print & Fax, select printer then Open Print Queue.