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Even though we're living more and more of our lives online, that doesn't mean we've gone completely paperless. Despite the effortless convenience of emails and text messages, sometimes a digital image or document isn't enough. When all our computing was done on a laptop or desktop, printing to a physically connected printer was a simple affair (once you had your drivers sorted out). But today, more and more people do their computing on their phones. How do you print something from a smartphone? Hint, use a nifty new network-connected printer.
Android 12 has been out for a while, but we keep finding new things in it. The most recent noteworthy addition comes to the built-in printing department, which Google has improved thanks to code submitted by the Mopria Alliance, an industry body focused on creating universal printing and scanning standards. There are improvements for especially large files and better automatic support for different types of paper.
Turn your phone into a mobile printing powerhouse with this universal app
This article is sponsored by Mopria
Even in a mostly digital world, there are still times when you need to quickly print an important document, whether it be for work, school, a hobby, or otherwise. Instead of reaching for a computer, why not put your phone up to the task? With some help from Mopria, you can easily print files straight from your favorite Android device.
Cloud connectivity isn't an area of focus for most printers, and if the shutdown of Google Cloud Print is any indication, there aren't many people looking to control their printers with cloud services. However, Amazon has now released an update to Alexa that allows it to connect to printers, so you can use voice commands to control them.To get started, just ask "Alexa, discover my printer," or add a printer device in the Alexa mobile app. Select models from HP, Brother, Canon, and Epson are already supported, with more to come soon. Once your printer is connected, you can print documents like shopping/to-do lists, Sudoku puzzles, coloring pages, graph paper, lined paper, and test pages. Nothing groundbreaking, but it can save some time compared to doing a web search for a graph paper template.
Printers are terrible, but in many circumstances, they are a necessary evil — especially in the offices and schools where Chromebooks have a stronghold. Chrome OS has been slowly expanding its support for printing over the past few years, as native printing (without Google Cloud Print) arrived in mid-2017, and last year's Chrome OS 78 update made further improvements. Now Google is preparing another key update: a print manager.
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- Printing from Calendar in Chrome 77 should be working just fine now, no print-to-PDF hack needed.
Chrome 77 started rolling out a few days ago, and it has plenty of improvements — a feature for sending links to other devices, a contact picker for web apps, a faster Lite Mode, and more. However, it also introduced one (admittedly minor) bug: printing might not work from Google Calendar.
As any Android enthusiast will know, Google loves testing new UIs and features on random users. Sometimes the changes are welcome, but other times... not so much. This latest addition to Google Photos falls into the latter category, because a dedicated Printing tab is something that nobody asked for.
Earlier this year, AOSP commits revealed that Android 9.0 would support printing via Wi-Fi Direct. Put simply, it would allow your phone to print documents over a peer-to-peer connection (without being on the same Wi-Fi network). Some manufacturers have added Wi-Fi Direct support to their own print service plugins, but the native Android print service didn't have it.
Google Cloud Print has recently received a material redesign of its own. You would be forgiven for thinking that the printing service wasn't its own app, given how it's tucked away with your device's other settings. But when you do go to "add a printer," you are, in fact, kicked out to a different app.
Autodesk's mobile offerings for Android are almost always impressive or useful, often both. From SketchBook to Pixlr Express, the company has consistently provided Android users with great apps. Today, there's a new entry in Autodesk's catalog that lives up to that reputation - 123D Catch. In a nutshell, the app lets users create 3D models of real objects using just their smartphone camera.
The Adobe Reader app has received another update that brings in a couple of new features for Android users who turn to it for their PDF-handling needs. The little piece of software can already handle reading files just fine, but for people who would rather hold a physical copy of a text in their hands, the latest version should better help with that. KitKat printing support is now bundled in, so users can print to any printers that they have saved to their devices.
If you've got a printer in your home or office, there's a pretty good chance it's made by Epson. Since the announcement of KitKat's new printer support, you might have also been looking forward to being able to send a document straight from your Android device to your Epson printer. Good news: that dream is now a reality. The manufacturer just announced that it has released a plugin to enable native printing support on Android KitKat.
Earlier today, a post on the Chrome Releases blog announced Chrome 31 is moving from beta to the stable. The update is coming in with a number of exciting features, including: printing from Chrome on devices with KitKat, support for requestAutocomplete to auto-fill payment details with online stores, 'Add to home screen' for web apps, and more.