Nearly four years ago, Microsoft first announced Universal Print. It allowed businesses to run their printers without the need to install drivers on local PCs, as they could be run on the cloud via Azure. It officially became available for all Microsoft 365 business and education users in March 2021. It also supports the majority of the major printers from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta, Lexmark, Toshiba, Ricoh, and Xerox.
In April of 2023, the Microsoft 365 Roadmap stated that Universal Print support was coming to Apple's macOS. The plan was to launch a public preview in June 2023, and a full launch in September 2023. However, for unknown reasons, that timetable did not happen.
However, today, Microsoft officially announced that macOS support for Universal Print was finally available as a public preview. In a blog post, Microsoft stated that this will allow businesses who use Macs as well as Windows PCs to access printers and "print from any Mac app using the system print dialog without having to install drivers."
Microsoft 365 businesses and organizations with Macs can now go to the Microsoft Azure Portal and in the Global Settings section, they should see a new "macOS Support (preview)" section. They can click on the "Show all printers" dialog. Then they can download the new Universal Print app from Apple's Mac App Store.
After that, they can use the new app to sign in with a Microsoft 365 account with Universal Print support and access to a macOS printer. They can then find and add a printer in the app, and they try out printing something with the Print dialog in macOS.
Since this is a public preview, there could be bugs and issues with this macOS support. Microsoft has not yet announced when Universal Print for the Mac will become generally available.
7 Comments - Add comment