For many office environments, LAN shared printers are often just needed. If most of the devices in the LAN are Windows devices, the connected USB printer can be easily shared to the LAN through network sharing.
But for Apple devices in the same local area network, because many printers' Mac drivers still have problems with macOS Big Sur support, it will become very troublesome to use Windows devices to share printers in the above local area network environment.
Can you convert a shared printer on Windows into an AirPrint printer so that Apple devices can also access and print wirelessly ? The answer is yes.
Step 1. Turn on printer sharing
First, we still need to connect the USB printer to the Windows device and enable "Network Discovery" in the network.
Then open "Control Panel> Hardware and Sound> Devices and Printers" on Windows, find the printer that needs to be shared, right-click and select "Printer Properties", and finally check "Share this printer" in the "Sharing" tab.
Step 2. Configure the "transfer" service
We need to install Bonjour Print Services (Windows) on Windows, a gadget produced by Apple 10 years ago. With its Bonjour Printer Wizard, we can find and configure Bonjour-enabled printers on Windows computers. Here we mainly use the sharing function of Bonjour.
Then what we need to install is a third-party configuration tool-AirPrint Installer. After downloading and decompressing, you will see three files. First, we run AirPrint Installer.exe with administrator rights.
Click Install AirPrint Service in the main interface to install the wireless printing service into the system service item.
Then we select Service Startup> Auto, and then click start, so that the entire service has been started.
It should be noted here that the AirPrint Auth on the right side of the window selects the Windows account that has been logged in in the current state by default. If your usage scenario includes an intranet server (running a Windows server operating system), then here is also The guest account can be opened to realize subsequent printing without password.
Step 3. Configure the firewall
. The next thing we need to do is to "patch" this AirPrint for Windows: Find the two registry files corresponding to AirPrint iOS 5 FIX in the AirPrint Installer folder decompressed above, according to the system is 32-bit Still 64-bit select the corresponding version and perform registration.
Then we open "Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Services" and check whether the AirPrint and Bonjour services are already activated.
Finally, let’s set up the network firewall. First, turn on "Open Allow programs or functions through Windows Firewall" in "Control Panel> Windows Firewall", and then check the AirPrint for Windows and Bonjour services in the list, "Home/Work" and " Public options have been checked.
At the same time, for the host of Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016/2019, We also need to add several additional ports to ensure that Apple devices can find the printer: here first find "Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Advanced Security Windows Defender Firewall", and then click "New Rule" on the right side of "Inbound Rules" ".
In the pop-up "New Rule Wizard", first select port in the "Rule Type", then select TCP in the next "Protocol and Port", and enter "5354" in the specific local port; in the next step Check "Allow Connection" in "Operation", then click Next by default for all the following, and finally set a specific name to complete. In the same way as
, we need to set three rules. In addition to the above TCP 5354 port, we also need to allow the UDP port 5353 and TCP 631 port, so that the firewall is all set up.
The last and most important step: restart Windows.
Device configuration and testing
First make sure that the Mac and iOS devices in the local area network and the Windows computer connected to the printer are in the same network segment, and then we first try the iOS device.
Open the Safari browser and open a webpage, click the share button and find "Print" in the pop-up sharing menu, and then click "Printer" in the "Printer Options" to select the printer. If you can see the AirPrint printer you just set up Even if it is successful, after selecting the printer, enter the Windows account password (the guest account can be free of password when the server opens the guest account) to realize the space printing.
macOS settings are also very simple, open "System Preferences> Printers and Scanners", and then click the add button in the lower right corner to add a printer.
Select the first tab in "Add Printer", if no accident, the environment will automatically search for the AirPrint printer set above, select and click Add. After
, you can see the status of this AirPrint printer in "Printers and Scanners", open a document and try to print.
The above method has been tested and passed under the following system:
Windows host: Windows Server 2008 R2
macOS Big Sur
iOS 14
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