Printopia
Printopia is a Mac utility that shares printers and virtual print destinations so iPhone and iPad devices can print through your Mac.
What is Printopia?
Printopia is a macOS utility from Decisive Tactics, Inc. that lets iPhone and iPad users print to printers connected to a Mac, including older printers that do not support AirPrint on their own. It works with the built-in printing feature on iOS, so people can print from their mobile devices without installing a separate iPhone or iPad app. In addition to sharing physical printers, it can create virtual destinations that save print jobs to a Mac, including options such as sending output as PDF files or screenshots. This makes it useful at home, in small offices, and in classrooms where a Mac can act as the bridge between Apple mobile devices and existing printers. Users typically install it when they want easier wireless printing from iPhone or iPad to printers already available on their Mac.
Key features
- Share printers connected to your Mac with iPhone and iPad devices
- Enable printing from iOS without installing a separate mobile app
- Turn older non-AirPrint printers into AirPrint-accessible printers
- Save print jobs from mobile devices to your Mac as files
- Send printed output to Dropbox as a virtual destination
- Adjust printer-specific options such as paper size, color, and print quality
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Safety overview
Status: Mostly safe
Printopia is legitimate printer-sharing software for macOS. It runs on your Mac so iPhone and iPad devices on your network can discover shared printers and send print jobs through your computer. That background activity is normal for its purpose, but it also means printing may stop if you quit or remove it. Before removing it, make sure you no longer rely on your Mac to share printers or receive virtual print jobs such as saved PDFs or screenshots.
Recommendation: Keep Printopia if you use your Mac to make printers available to iPhone or iPad devices, or if you use its virtual print destinations. If you no longer need wireless printer sharing through your Mac, you can remove it without affecting macOS itself, but shared mobile printing through Printopia will stop.
Common paths
/Applications/Printopia.app
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