How to create a fake printer for testing with PaperCut Pocket / Hive

Why even bother creating a fake printer?

Fake virtual printers can be useful for internal testing so you don’t waste real, physical paper when sending print jobs to them. Also, if you want to try out PaperCut Pocket or PaperCut Hive and don’t own a printer currently, it’s a good way to skip our initial printer discovery process.

Steps

1. You’ll need to install a print queue on your computer (on either Windows or macOS) which has one of the following names:
   • hivetestprinter
   • pockettestprinter
2. Ideally, use a nul port instead of the real printer’s IP address so nothing prints out. Once the print queue has been created on your computer, it will show up on the next discovery search (within 60 minutes) or a forced restart of your machine.

After this, it will show up in the PaperCut Pocket or PaperCut Hive Admin console, under the Printers tab as shown in the screenshot below. Make sure to toggle the publish option.

You can also add a custom affix to have multiple fake virtual queues, for example: hivetestprinter-1, hivetestprinter-2 or HiveTestPrinter-Coffee. These entries do not have to be case sensitive in order to work.

Have a question?

Let us know! Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our Support Portal for further assistance.

For more information about PaperCut Pocket and Hive, check out the PaperCut Pocket and Hive Help Center.