Android has a cups client app, so you can use that instead of Google's printing service.
It's on f-droid.
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
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Yeah! CUPS is great. I just connected my Brother printer to it and everything Just Works.
bump. my brother multifunction worked flawlessly. scanner, printer...I assume the fax would work if it was hooked up.
Mac is 85-90%
Windows, I just completely uninstall/reinstall for each use because it is more reliable than trying to use it otherwise.
oddly enough, the Canon I got will only work properly from the phone, which pisses me off everyday. that thing is a POS.
I used to sell printers. Canon printers, more than any other brand, are purely just a vehicle to sell photo paper, ink, and ink subscriptions. Their laser units are another story, quite capable machines (not sure about lifelong reliability), but the inkjets are hot garbage. They have multiple models that cost less to purchase than the replacement cartridges... With the sort of build quality you might expect at that price point. HP, as awful as they are, never stooped quite that low afaik. Brother laser is the way to go, always.
Edit just to shit even harder on Canon, the amount of those printers returned to store was 3x all others put together. Only had one Brother returned in my entire 2 years there, and that was only because of logistics, not the machine itself.
big ol dookie on Canon...💩💩💩
one of the worst technology purchases I ever made.
I bought the laser brother for scan and documents, which is awesome.
but I needed something for photos.... found this "highly rated" Canon photo only printer.... hot garbage.
Apple developed CUPS https://www.cups.org/
Ehhh.... Apple took over CUPS development.
Michael Sweet of Easy Software Products developed CUPS in the late 90s. Apple hired Michel Sweet about a decade later and bought the source code.
After he left apple (another 10 years or so later), OpenPrinting forked it and Michael Sweet continued working on it there.
But no, Apple did not develop CUPS. I don't blame you for thinking they did though.
Edit: Forgot to note.
Source: I'm fucking old now and was using Linux before CUPS existed. Holy shit was it great once it went IPP from LPD.
Edit 2: Sorry because Apple does this a lot and this one still annoys me - Safari was built on KHTML, aka KDE and Konqueror. So anyone trying to say that Apple made WebKit all in house would also be wrong.
Apple likes to do that. Take stuff and then pretend they made it. Especially from open source projects.
Companies do that. Apple more quiet, Microsoft more abusive.
Yup. MS has been more blatant and ruthless, where Apple has quietly taken (or even just taken credit for) the works of others over the years. For Apple you've got the ipod click wheel (creative), the original GUI (PARC), slide to unlock (noenode).... Apple, much like MS, has been doing this sort of stuff from the start.
Thanks for the history!
I'm glad my decades old grudges against apple could be informative!
Apple is such a frustrating company lol. In Seattle we still don't have tap-to-pay for public transit with iPhones because Apple keeps so much control over what the NFC transceiver on their devices can be used for. You can tap-to-pay with Android devices. So I'm stuck still using my physical card.
Yeah and It's used in iOS.
I feel like there's another issue going on here because I print from my iPhone constantly and never have this issue.
At least someone has had good experiences with CUPS lol. cupsd is usually the first thing I uninstall when I install Linux onto a PC since it never works.
Weird, CUPS used to be one of the few software that worked mostly flawlessly out of the box. It works pretty well for me
This has not been my experience .. at .. all.
Perhaps it would be helpful to discover what exactly doesn't work for you and fix that, rather than remove CUPS because one time it didn't work for you seven years ago.
the implication that they only tried it once is childish
Perhaps it would be helpful if people who weren't interested in discussing in good faith would refrain from posting
How would you suggest I respond in the future?
We have a person, claiming that CUPS doesn't work and they now uninstall it on every installation.
There is no context, no data, no information that suggests what the issue is, what they tried, when this occurred, on which platform, under which conditions.
In other words, the user was essentially saying "CUPS sux".
Having used Linux as my main system for over 25 years, that sentiment did not match my own experience, does not help anyone, not me, not the user and not the OP who was trying to solve a problem, let alone anyone else reading along.
I responded accordingly.
I would suggest responding to what they wrote, rather than what they didn't write or what you imagine they may have written, but that's just me.
Another good option is to not respond at all.
Inventing a strawman then arguing with it is pointless
I must have done something wrong because the last time I removed cupsd it bricked my Linux Mint install.
Cups is awesome. I have an ancient HP laserjet 1100 connected to an ancient parallel-to-Ethernet adapter, connected to my ancient router. Cups works flawlessly with this setup, Windows never worked.
FYI: CUPS was recently outed as extremely insecure and irrevocably broken by design. So if you're not actively printing, it's probably best to uninstall it.
Less FYI more PSA (?)
Usually the print service is implemented by the printer manufacturer. Maybe try installing one or both of these apps, I needed them to print, and it worked fine after that:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brother.mfc.mobileconnect
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brother.mfc.brprint
I'm sure there's some way to use PS or PCL printing from Android too, but that's probably a lot more effort.
You could print to CUPS from the other devices and potentially bypass all those shenanigans.
Also, CUPS has a PDF printer which saves you from even heating up your printer at all .. I haven't had a printer in my life for over 25 years.