Printing a document on your phone can be a pain. But thanks to wireless printers and the latest technologies this is super simple. Now with your iPhone, you can connect to a wireless printer and print any document you need within a couple of seconds. This is easy and fast and saves you from a lot of trouble. You don’t need to send the document to a PC and print from there instead just connect and print. Today we discuss how to add a printer to an iPhone.
AirPrint in iPhone
AirPrint is the technology offered by Apple to enable this wireless cross-platform printing. This means you can print using any Apple device. There are many benefits of this technology, not only this enables wireless printing you do not need to install additional drivers when you print documents using AirPrint. You can print full-quality documents, images, web pages from any of your Apple devices. AirPrint is supported by many printer models. You can find the list of printer models that support AirPrint technology here.
It’s fairly easy to print from printers with AirPrint. Otherwise, you will need to configure your wireless printer with additional apps so your iPhone can connect it. We will discuss this later.
How to Add a Printer to an iPhone and print from it
If your wireless printer has AirPrint technology follow the below steps. Remember that you do not need to add the printer before you print the document. You can add the printer and connect to it at the same time when you are about to print the document.
Before you begin make sure that you have the latest version of iOS installed and the printer you use is supported by AirPrint technology. And connect them both to the same Wi-Fi network.
- From the iPhone, go to the file you want to print. This could be an image, text document, Pdf, or any printable file.
- Open the file and tap on the share icon.
- Find “Print” in the share menu. You can find an icon with a printer.
- Now tap on the select printer, now iPhone will scan to find any AirPrint printers. When you see the printer select it.
- From printer options, you can select the options you want, such as the number of copies, Double-sided or single-sided, and color or Black and white.
- You can see the print preview at the bottom. After choosing the print options click on print.
How to Add a Printer to an iPhone without AirPrint technology
As we said before all printers do not have AirPrint technology. However, some printer manufactures have released iOS apps for their printers, by using these apps you can print the documents you need by connecting to the printer. All you have to do is to download the app from the apps store and connect to the printer.
Unlike in the previous case now you will need to add the printer to your connected devices before you print the document. Before you begin enable Wi-Fi on both devices. Both devices shouldn’t be connected to any other Wi-Fi networks.
- You need to download the correct app which is compatible with your printer. You can search for the printer manufactures name to find a suitable app in the apps store, or you can search in google too. However, check if your printer is supported by the app before you install it. If it is not supported, this method will not work.
- After installing the software, open it and configure your printer first before connecting to your iPhone.
- Open your iPhones Wi-Fi network settings, now you need to connect to the wifi network which is created by the printer. This network is often named in the device name of the printer. Find it and connect to it.
- Now you can go to the document you want to print and select the print option.
Some third-party apps are compatible with a range of printer models. You can search for them in the apps store. When you do install these apps you can connect to your printer via iPhone.
How to print from an iPhone using email
You also can use email printing to print the documents you want. This is an advanced and cool printing method. By this method, you do not need to connect to the printer at all and this could be done using not only iPhone but using any other device too.
To do this your printer should be emailed compatible. Most wireless modern printers are email compatible, but you need to check it first by googling the printer model. After confirming it you can activate email printing.
Activating email printing
If your printer is email compatible you will need to activate email printing before you print. Enabling an email printer is unique from one manufacture to another but you should find a step-by-step guide on your user manual or the internet. After activation, your printer will get an email address. You can change the email address later if you do not like it. When you do email printing you do not need to connect your iPhone to your printer, but your printer needed to be connected to the internet via Wi-Fi.
When you set up email printing most of the time you will be asked to set up some default settings for email printing. You need to configure these settings. Also, you need to check for the acceptable file sizes and the number of files you can attach per email when you do email printing. Most of the printing formats should be accepted by default.
Printing via email from iPhone
Now that printing is easy, all you have to do is to go to emails, attach the document you want to print, and send it to the email address given to you when you activated email printing and it will print the document in default settings.
We hope you could print your documents via iPhone using one of the above methods. Keep in mind that these methods will mostly work with the most common printer models and manufacturers.