Changes

June 8, 2021 Updated Big Sur listing. Added resetting printing system, adding new printer directions from Apple to critical notes. Added Open source printer addition to each OS heading above.

February 4, 2021 Added Big Sur info.

January 10, 2021 Editing changes. Big Sur compatibility listing.

April 15, 2020 Editing changes.

February 8, 2020 Added section for Catalina, Mac OS 10.15.

September 30, 2018 Some printers are coming in as incompatible with Mojave (10.14) on Apple Support Communities. Printer and scanner updates for Mojave posted.
January 27, 2016 fixes two more printer driver links on Apple's download page to support El Capitan. I've indicated the latest release date of drivers that I could find. September 30, 2015, 10.11 was released, and older drivers may not work with it. Check with the manufacturer for your individual printer driver to see if they have a download for El Capitan, even if the download below was dated before El Capitan. They may have already tested the software with El Capitan. If they have, you may have to download the driver directly from the manufacturer. Such was the case with the Canon Pixma MX922. Its driver was from February 2015, and yet, labelled on Canon's website as El Capitan compatible. Downloading it direct from there, and it works. The scanner though will not appear on Image Capture anymore, and you have to download the Canon IJ drivers separately on 10.11 and 10.11.1, though this does not support the Automatic Document Feeder. 10.11.2 fixes this issue. When you Option click Add driver in Apple menu ->System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners to add drivers, you will sometimes get the printer or scanner that already is plugged in as a driver. In those instances, you can use the drivers that are old. I have started an Apple Support Communities thread to discuss this issue. As it happens I also joined Apple's bugreporter program and they informed me it was fixed with 10.11.2. As I had just upgraded to 10.11.3, I went to check if it had been fixed and now the document feeder reappears in Image Capture. As also mentioned in the thread, under some circumstances, you can download the driver from the manufacturer which is stated to be 10.11 compatible and install it from there, even if the driver is not newer than El Capitan's release. So always check both Apple and the manufacturer for updated drivers even if it is not available from Apple, and install its latest driver.
Others have found going as far back as 10.9's scanner driver to help their Canon MP630. Unfortunately as long as printer and scanner developers fail to supply Apple with updates, you may or may not be in for a rude awakening trying to use your peripheral with El Capitan. Lastly, other issues with 10.11 over prior operating systems are covered on my Upgrade FAQ.

This page has direct links to many of the printer vendors Mac OS X information page, as well as solutions to changes in the Mac OS X operating system that aren't supported by the printer vendors, yet supported by open source programmers. Note, this list is by no means comprehensive. If you find a printer that supports Mac OS X not listed here, please e-mail me from my guestbook page.

January 19, 2019: Added link for Konica. September 30, 2018: Add Mac OS 10.14 Mojave drivers section
March 12, 2016: Found more compatible printers for El Capitan both from vendors not on Apple's download list, and Apple's download list, and addressed those on the initial list.
January 27, 2016: Lexmark & Epson add drivers directly on Apple's download page.
December 8, 2015: Apple fixes Image Capture's support of Canon MX922 scanning, and possibly other multifunction scanner support with the release of 10.11.2
November 3, 2015: Canon adds drivers on Apple's download page for Laser printers.
October 8, 2015: Brother adds drivers directly on Apple's download page.
October 8, 2015: Added dates next to printers on Apple's support section of printers, as downloads that were after 10.11's release did not coincide with its release. December 6, 2013: HP All In One scanning issues with Mavericks added to the vendor page section.
December 5, 2013: Updated header bullet list to include Apple's downloads for specific vendor drivers.
August 26, 2010: Added PCL 6 PC/XL Ricoh Aficio MP1600Le info.
September 2, 2009: Added Dymo's Macintosh pages.
August 31, 2009: Added Apple's listing of compatible 10.6 printers.
February 6 2008: Added Okidata 10.5 drivers to vendor pages for the C3300 and C3400
January 2: Alps printer drivers added to Vendor page
December 22, 2007: Canon MX700 drivers sensitive to old HP drivers added to critical notes
December 10: Lexmark Support page info from Apple added under Vendor specific page.
December 6: HP support added for C8150, C8180, C8183, and C8150 under vendor specific drivers for Leopard (10.5)
December 4: Added link to Apple compatible printers for Mac OS X 10.5 under Critical Notes
October 14: Added USBTB to the Parallel printing solutions.
May 24: Added HP compatibility note with 10.4.9 under the Critical Notes section.
January 6, 2007: Added Apple Stylewriter section
August 13: Added Brother Critical note for Tiger
August 2: Added ESP Print Pro to Vendor page. Over 5300 crossplatform printer drivers
May 20: Added Epson 740 Print Jobs stop issue to Epson section in manufacturer.
May 18: Added note about Samsung printers in vendor section
May 5: Added second Apple Classic printing article
March 27: Added link to Apple's Classic printing knowledgebase article
January 23, 2005: Added serial printing guide to Mac OS X
September 21, 2004: Added unofficial listing of known compatible printers with Airport Express and Extreme in vendor section
September 17: Added HP All in one Classic printer help page in Vendor section
September 5: Added Thermal Printer drivers link from Peninsula Group in Vendor section
July 15: Added Raster supported printers by Mac OS X 10.3 to Raster Image Processor section
April 25: Added Airport printing troubleshooting page under Helpful Utilities.
April 15: Added Printfab and Proofmaster Adesso links under RIP utilities
March 14: Added link under vendor section to Apple's instructions for setting up printers under Mac OS X, added suggestion for using a second user to setup a printer under the Helpful Utilities section.
February 7: Added Printer Setup Repair for 10.3.x, and modified Print Center Repair to indicate it is for 10.2.x and lower in the Helpful Utilities section
. February 3: Added to Utilities section All in One Communications application resetter for HP printers.
January 27: Files to delete if nothing else works is added to helpful utilities section
January 26: Added next to Lexmark's link an important note about Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)
January 24: Updated links within pages above
January 20, 2004: Put RIP solutions on page.
November 9, 2003: Added Allosx's Panther Printing Fix
September 8: Added Minolta
July 24: Added Keyspan's Parallel printer adapter
April 6: Added Turboprint (now called Printfab)
March 19: Added Ricoh printer info
March 2: Added HP RIP driver info
December 22, 2002: Added info on Mac OS X 10.2.3
December 12: Updated Canon's Printer page link to current one, added Print Center Repair link
December 11: Added Epson RIP and Colormatching drivers for Mac OS X, and HP AIO 10.2.2 workaround
November 23: Added Alps printer drivers
November 17: Added new HP printer support from Linuxprinting.org
November 14: Added new links Apple, Brother, and Samsung drivers, and appended those vendor links with Guten-print (formerly known as gimp-print) drivers.
September 2: Added vendor page, Apple's new printer guide.
August 25: Added Gimp Print infoAug 6, 2021
This page is arranged into the following sections:

Vendor specific updates

Apple recommends for all printers, if a printer fails, reset the printing system.

Printers not listed above have El Capitan drivers available directly from their vendors, as listed below:

HP - http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04473034 has more direct info about compatible printers on their support documents page including 10.11 compatibility.

Canon has this page to find if your printer is El Capitan Compatible:

Kodak has a generic 7.9 driver for all in one printers and El Capitan: http://support.en.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17378/selected/true

Dell's listing is here: http://www.dell.com/support/Article/us/en/19/SLN299394/EN

Samsung gave me the Yosemite & El Capitan printers via their online support chat, as they have not made a specific page for these:

Sl-C1810, Sl-C1860, SL-C410, SL-M2020, Sl-M2070, SL-M2835, SL-M2875, SL-M2885

• Apple Support for PowerMac 10.4, Support for printers on Intel Macs from 10.4.4, 10.6 and later Drivers in this link that are not included in Apple's downloads below, are available from the vendors in the subsequent listing. Apple's Airport compatible printers article lists those printers that will print over WiFi when sharing the same WiFi network as a Mac, iPhone, or iPad
• Helpful utilities - includes references for running printers in Classic
• PCL 6 PC XL - a fix for Snow Leopard and PCL 6/PC XL printers.
• Raster Image Processor software options- this is especially important for printing documents scanned directly into Photoshop, as they may not print without running an image processor.
• Open source scanner drivers by SANE.

Big Sur links Mac OS 11.0

• M1 chip solution - third party.
• Apple built-in support, November 12, 2020.

Catalina, Mac OS 10.15

10.15 Catalina manufacturer links.:
Brother

Ricoh: On October 24th 2019, Ricoh updated many of their Sierra and later drivers including drivers compatible with Catalina on the website. Select the Or Option on the right side of the page to find out if yours is one of them.

Canon.

Epson has this help page for scanners. Their printer support is on the driver individual pages.

has more tips from Epson.

Hewlett Packard & Samsung.

Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

Mac OS 10.14 Mojave

• Third party update pages for Mojave have been added below:

  Brother compatible devices from Brother

  Canon compatible devices from Canon

  Epson compatible printers from Epson

  Fujitsu compatible devices from Fujitsu

  HP compatible printers from HP

  Konica/Minolta compatible devices from Konica/Minolta

  Lexmark compatible printers from Lexmark.

  Scanner drivers through Silverfast.

Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

10.11 El Capitan updates.

NRG (January 27, 2016)

Some drivers may only appear when you add using the Option/Alt key in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Printers and Scanners.

Critical Notes

Most common printing issues, can be resolved with Apple's directions to reset the printing system.

New printers are added using Apple's directions.

William Huisking discovered on Apple Discussions that his MX700 drivers would not work with old HP drivers installed in 10.4.11. He had to delete all remnants of HP folders from his various Library folders in System -> Library, Hard drive -> Library, and User -> Library. If you find you have a similar issue, I'd report this to Canon and let them know so they can find out what drivers conflict with the existing HP drivers.
Apple has released a listing of all the included printer drivers for Mac OS X 10.5 on knowledgebase article 306684
A system administrator named Sinjin Lindbeck contacted HP technical support and discovered that repairing permissions would fix this problem they described to me that exists with 10.4.9:
'If running OS 10.4.9 and your HP printers, scanners, etc start losing print jobs into the ether or fail intermittently, perform a repair disk permissions to eliminate the problem. I spent about 4 hours on my own and finally called HP. They said it was a problem with their drivers and 10.4.9. Just thought I'd share.' Repair permissions is found in Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility.
If you have a printer issue which was resolved please state the issue that was resolved, the printer model, the operating system version, and how it was resolved in the guestbook.

With the release of Panther (Mac OS X 10.3), many of these printer drivers may no longer work. Double check with the manufacturer to make sure the printer is still supported. Apple included many new printer drivers with Panther which may work better. Check if your printer vendor is listed on the installer of Panther, and make sure that any older versions of the printer drivers are removed before installing the Panther printer drivers.
Please Note: Print Center has a new name under Mac OS X 10.3. It is called Printer Setup Utility. It can also be activated under Mac OS X 10.3 through Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Print and Fax -> Printing -> Setup Printers. Instructions below relating to Print Center should work most of the time in Print Setup Utility
Note Guten print (formerly known as gimp-print) and linuxprinting drivers do not support double sided printing on all printers and may also have trouble printing directly from Adobe applications, though you can print using the preview application after making a preview of your print job.
At this time it is unknown if Printfab drivers have any limitations over what is supported by the makers of these printers.
It was found that the Tiger (with Mac OS X 10.4) driver for the Brother HL-2070 works for HL-2040 printer whose drivers don't come with Tiger.

Ricoh Aficio MP1600Le PCL 6/PC XL in 10.6

On Apple Discussions, a user had trouble with a Ricoh Aficio MP1600Le in printing. The following suggestion was offered by another user:The drivers from the Ricoh site are for those printers that have the optional PostScript module installed. Your description would indicate that the PostScript module is most likely not installed. You will need to determine the printer languages that your printer can understand. You do this by printing a configuration page from the printer. If the configuration page shows that it can understand PCL 6/PCL XL, then you can install the pxlmono drivers for Mac OS X from Linux Foundation. Be sure to also download and install Foomatic-RIP and Ghostscript.

This may help if you have printer that meets the same standards.

RIP (Raster Image Processor drivers)

Four known raster image processing utilities exist for Mac OS X:
Apple's listing of raster supporting printers lists some built-in support by Apple.
iProof Systems PowerRIP, which are used for some Epson printers. iProof's customer service was recently very poorly rated in the UK by a poster on Apple Discussions. Whether this is an isolated instance or not, it is unknown.
HPs RIP processor software for several of their printers
Print Fab - open source driver based RIP utility. Star RIP from Macartworld is another RIP software.

Helpful Utilities

Apple article 300849 helps explain how to print using the Classic environment, and so does http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh660.html
This Apple article discusses how to troubleshoot printing over a wireless connection with Apple's Airport technology.
Allosx's Panther Printing Fix.
Some issues with existing printers may be resolved with Print Center repair for 10.1.x and 10.2.x, Printer Setup Repair for 10.3.x.
Among the improvements listed for Mac OS X 10.2.3 which may solve HP printing problems:
'Improves compatibility for the HP Communications application.'
'Printing and Print Center Enhancements
* Improves ability of Print Center to automatically find and add USB printers.
* Enhances default printer selection process after network printers have automatically been added.
* Printers configured with a Rendezvous name are now selectable from a Print dialog window.
* Improves notifications when a job cannot be printed due to a stopped print queue.'
You can download 10.2.3 update to 10.2, 10.2.1 or update to 10.2.2 and install to see if it makes a difference for you.
HP has also released a utility called aioscript.sit to reset the All in One driver Communications application in case it has a fit.

Files to delete

When all else fails one suggestion that appeared on Apple's discussion board is to delete the com.apple.print files in the following folders:
/Library/Preferences/ByHost
/Users/yourusernamehere/Library/Preferences
/Users/yourusernamehere/Library/Preferences/ByHost
If that is done, it may be necessary to repair permissions to achieve a stable system and possibly reinstall the printer drivers if they aren't working.
To repair permissions open: Hard Drive -> Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility -> First Aid -> select hard drive in Disk Utility window and click on Repair Permissions. Note, this option is not available in Mac OS X 10.1.4 or earlier. Mac OS X 10.1.5
does not have this option in Disk Utility, though does have a Repair Privileges utility which achieves the same goal.

Vendor pages

• Alps printer drivers. Additional drivers may be more current at the Japanese driver site (translated from Japanese to English).
• The Apple Guide's search engine for compatible printers (older searchable guide from Apple's software/hardware compatibility database)
• Brother, also see Linuxprinting.org drivers, Guten-print (formerly known as Gimp-print), and Printfab
• Canon, also see Guten-print (formerly known as Gimp-print) and Printfab
• Dymo's Label printer drivers
• Epson, alternate Australian site may have more up-to-date drivers for Epson, Epson RIP and and colormatching drivers from iProof Systems, Guten-Print (formerly known as Gimp-print), and Printfab.
• GCC - printer drivers for GCC are now only available from open source
• Hewlett Packard (HP), and PrintfabIf you have 10.2.2 or earlier see the helpful utilities. HP support for C8100 series Photosmart drivers. The original PowerPC support no longer exists on HP's website. However Mac OS X 10.6.8 support still exists. HP Mavericks scanning suggestions for all in one units.
• Konica Minolta - has listings for 10.12 through 10.14 compatibility. Note, there is a separate page for Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave, which is newer
• Lexmark, and Apple article 307081 discusses how to install Lexmark drivers on Mac OS X 10.5. Also see Guten-print (formerly known as gimp-print).
• Peninsula Group's Thermal and Barcode Printer drivers for several different Thermal printers.
• Latest Mac OS X Samsung drivers, also see Linuxprinting.org's drivers. According to one report on Apple Discussions, the 10.4.1 update (no longer available try 10.4.2 through 10.4.10 or 10.4.11) has been reported to solve a Samsung 1710 printer's inability to print on 10.4.0 with its Samsung ML-1000 driver.
• Tektronix (supported by Xerox)
• Serial printing guide - Print to non-USB, Parallel, or ethernet printers using old Apple serial technology
• Xerox

  Migrating from 10.1 to 10.2 using Gimp Print

  Several printer models are no longer supported under Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) that may have been supported under Mac OS X 10.0 or 10.1, some will be have new support added later on, check with the printer vendor if they are going to build Jaguar support.
  There is a temporary solution for numerous printers using Guten Print (formerly known as Gimp Print) (download the latest ppc version),
  with instructions on Allosx.com to install it. Here is the Developer Site for Gimp Print.

  Migrating from 10.0 to 10.1

  Two tips for migrating between Mac OS X 10.0 and 10.1 printers:
  One person in the old Forum Macfixit reported problems getting the drivers to still work, but found a workaround:
  'Yup, I am running 10.1.2. it's entirely possible the new drivers
  wouldn't show up if you aren't running 10.1.2.
  I fixed my problem, there was something wrong with the installer I
  believe. I removed all of my HP drivers, then removed the receipt that said
  I had installed it, and ran Software Update.
  After that, the Print Center launched fine, and found my printer.
  BTW, tons of people are having the problem - check out macintouch.com
  and other posts here.'
  From the sounds of this, if you have an old driver and can't get the update
  to work, you might consider removing the old drivers for your particular model before
  applying the update. A second person mentioned on Macfixit: 'I have gotten my deskjet 940c to work with 10.1. Before you upgrade to 10.1, (while 10.0.4 is still
  installed), pull the deskjet folder out of '/Library/Printers/hp/'. Save this to your desktop.
  Upgrade to 10.1. Then, install the contents of this folder back to the new deskjet folder in
  '/Library/Printers/hp/deskjet'. My Print Center immediately recognized the printer.'

  Parallel printing support

  USBTB - offers a variety of USB and Parallel printing solutions for both Mac OS X PowerPC and Intel Native solutions based on open source drivers. Note this link is archived in webarchive, you will likely need to Google some of the references to find the most current link.
  Keyspan, now owned by Tripplite makes a Mac OS X 10.2 compatible USB to parallel printer adapter with additional drivers. Strydent's Powerprint, was a previous developer of Mac compatible USB to Parallel printer drivers, they included a USB Parallel adapter with their commercial software. Return to top of page | or visit this site's directory to Mac OS X related links on the web. Ages ago in the early days of the Mac, Apple teamed together with Canon (Stylewriter I through 2500) and HP (4100, 4500, and 6500) to make a series of inkjet printers with Apple's own logo on them. The Canon versions currently don't have a known working software for 10.4, however the HP ones do. Keyspan's USB to Serial adapters may work for HP based Stylewriter printers with Gutenprint or HPIJ drivers with the Serial Print Enabler.
  USB Gear has a whole range of serial and Parallel printer adapters for all versions of Mac OS.