Mobility Print FAQs

Mobility Print offers a unified and secure solution for printing from BYO mobile devices and laptops that are not managed by your organization (they are managed by the end user instead). There are pros and cons for all options and many of these are listed in the PaperCut NG/MF Manual. However in general, Mobility Print excels because it:

• offers a native print experience with more print options
• supports printing from any application (not just limited file types)
• for regular users that bring their own devices, maintains the same print experience as a traditional networked desktop system with a print driver installed
• is often quicker (after initial setup) to print via Mobility Print.

No. Mobility Print can run “standalone” so any users can print. However there is no user authentication or secure printing when Mobility Print is not connected to PaperCut NG/MF.

NOTE: If you do want to take advantage of everything PaperCut NG/MF has to offer and end up installing it, you’ll need to reinstall Mobility Print.

Mobility Print is compatible with PaperCut NG/MF. Use the two products together to get all the cost-cutting and document security value these products bring.

Contact us at sales@papercut.com to download PaperCut NG or PaperCut MF for your organization.

NOTE: After you install PaperCut NG/MF you need to reinstall Mobility Print.

You can find everything you need to know about installing PaperCut NG/MF in the PaperCut NG/MF Help Center (often referred to as “the Manual”).

IMPORTANT: Do not install Mobility Print Server on a domain controller. For more information, see Can I install PaperCut on a Domain Controller?

For the vast majority of organizations, you install Mobility Print on the system running the PaperCut Application Server and hosting your print queues. Some organizations have secondary print servers that you want to set up to support Mobility Print on. This configuration is supported, too, by installing Mobility Print on those secondary servers (that is, servers running the Print Provider).

Mobility Print works on Windows, macOS, and Linux print servers.

Yes. You need to install Mobility Print on each print server. For more information, see Setting up Mobility Print .

Each Mobility server is maintained independently. You can monitor your Mobility Print servers through the PaperCut NG/MF Admin web interface, but do the configuration on each Mobility Print server.

You can see a list of all Mobility Print servers in the PaperCut NG/MF Admin web interface in the Mobility Print area under Options > Mobile & BYOD. From here you can access the Mobility Print Admin web interface for each Mobility server.

This might occur when a user moves from a network where their client can see the printers, to a network where it cannot. The problem is that they are trying to connect to a cached DNS record of a printer so the Mac is unable to resolve the address.

To test this, flush the DNS cache on the Mac by opening a terminal window and running sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder. If that doesn’t help, contact support.

In order to support the broadest variety of printers and devices, Mobility Print uses generic drivers that support basic finishing options including:

• color/grayscale
• simplex/duplex (single-sided or double-sided)

For additional options like stapling, hole punching, and tray selection, there are a few advanced approaches:

• Use Print Deploy [Recommended]: Organizations with PaperCut NG or MF can use Print Deploy to push out Mobility Print queues with any print driver to Windows and macOS clients using PaperCut Print Deploy. This allows for more advanced finishing options that are only available with manufacturer-specific print drivers. See: Import Mobility Print queues (Advanced)
• Dedicated print queues: For mobile devices like iOS, Android, or Chrome, one workaround is to create separate print queues for each desired finishing option (e.g., “3rd Floor Library with hole punching”). An example implementation is discussed in our article Can Mobility Print users choose a tray ?
• Passthrough mode: You can get stapling to work when the Mobility Print client and server are both running Windows. To do so, the print queue on the server needs to have the PaperCut Global PostScript driver installed. Why? When both the client and server use the same driver, it enables “ passthrough mode ”. While this won’t help other types of devices, this means that stapling can at least work for Windows devices running the Mobility Print Client.
• Manually change the driver on the client: for Windows and macOS one option might be to install the Mobility Print queue on the client like normal, but then change the driver that’s used on the print queue on the user’s workstation. We can’t guarantee this will work with every driver- if there’s any printing issues you’re on your own. But we have heard of a number of cases where admins have done this to appease that one user.

Mobility Print supports all printers that have drivers for modern Windows operating systems except label printers and plotters. This is because the drivers for label printers and plotters use non-standard page sizes. If you find any exceptions, or have problems, please let us know.

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Paper size options for Mobility Print printers on ChromeOS and iOS can be displayed with ISO names (for example, “ISO_A4”) instead of simple names (for example, “A4”) like on Windows. This is because for each paper size provided in the printer capabilities, Mobility Print retrieves two properties: Name and CustomDisplayName. Then it passes them to the print clients.

• The ChromeOS print dialog understands only the Name property. That’s why it can be displayed as “ISO_A4”; it’s exactly the value Mobility Print received from the printer driver. Some other printer models could provide “A4” in the Name property, so for those printers ChromeOS would display “A4” in the dialog.

• Some other operating systems are able to show the CustomDisplayName, which in most cases contains the more friendly name.

• Windows is unique; it displays its own default-supported set of paper sizes and they have user-friendly names.

Currently Mobility Print doesn’t check the Printer Properties options on a print queue to see what the default is. It ignores the color and duplex settings.

For example, if you set the properties on the print server to Black and White, on the client device adding the printer it will be set as color by default.

In a managed environment, there are two ways you can enforce these printing preferences:

• Use Print Deploy to roll out the Mobility Print print queues to Windows and Mac clients.
• Configure PaperCut NG/MF to force the preferences. You can do this using Print Scripting or via the Filters & Restrictions page.

Yes, under specific circumstances. Windows Mobility Print clients use the PaperCut Global PostScript driver, and this allows users to staple their documents if certain requirements are met:

• It must be a Windows client
• It must be a Windows Mobility Print server
• The Find-Me print queue on the server must also be configured to use the PaperCut Global PostScript driver
• The print job must be redirected to a queue configured with a staple supported vendor driver. When the client and server both use the PaperCut Global Postscript driver, that enables what we call “passthrough mode”. This should then allow Windows Mobility Print clients to have the option to staple their documents. You can find all the details on how passthrough mode works here .

Alternatively, another way to get stapling with Mobility Print is to push out the print queue with a different print driver, using PaperCut Print Deploy as described here .

Yes! By default Mobility Print for Windows uses the PaperCut Global PostScript driver, which supports basic finishing options such as Color versus Grayscale or Simplex versus Duplex. However, many customers request more advanced options such as stapling and hole punch that are only available with print drivers from their manufacturer.

PaperCut NG/MF customers can push out a Mobility Print queue to their users workstations with a custom driver using PaperCut Print Deploy following the instructions here .

In a nutshell, you will need to..

• Be running either PaperCut NG or MF
• Set up a “reference computer” to copy (or clone) the print queues from
• Install the Mobility Print queues on the reference computer
• Change the print driver used by the Mobility Print queue on the reference computer as needed
• Run the Print Deploy Cloner tool on the reference computer
• Use Print Deploy to create “zones” to push out your printers.

Note: if you use the “Import BYOD-Friendly queues” wizard in Print Deploy, this will let you add your Mobility Print queues to zones, but you won’t be able to change the driver. You will need to use the cloning method above to switch the driver.

You don’t need to! It’s automatic! We know that updating software is both important and often difficult. Updating server infrastructure is even more crucial in the BYOD and mobility space. Why? Because end-user devices just update and often with little or no forewarning. To remain compatible with this fast pace, the following components auto-update:

• Mobility Print Server
• Android Mobility Print App
• Chromebook Mobility Print Extension Auto update checks are performed nightly during periods of low activity (sometime between midnight and 1:00 am), and updates are applied in the background with minimal or no downtime. Updates might incorporate bug and security fixes, add new features, and improve the user interfaces.

Automatic update checks are performed over a secure HTTPS connection. No personal or system information is shared during this process. Update signatures are verified before installation.

If for some reason your print server does not have access to the internet, you can manually update it any time by downloading the latest version and installing it over the top of the existing version.

Yes, you can! 

1. Open the mobility print executable configuration file <Applications folder>/PaperCut Mobility Print/pc-mobility-print.conf
2. Find the section for "ServiceConfig":
3. Modify the LogFileMaxSizeMb to a larger size.
   For example, increasing this value from 200 to 2048 will provide an increase from 200 megabytes to 2 gigabytes of total log retention

The output should look something like this:

“ServiceConfig”: {

   "LogFile": "data/logs/${ServiceName}.log",

   "LogFileMaxSizeMb": 2048

}

Yes! But not with Mobility Print alone. We have a number of methods available to ensure that users can only see or print to an approved set of Mobility printers. We describe and compare these methods in our article Deploy Mobility Print Queues by Group .

A: Configure Mobility Print to restrict printer access per subnet

B: Push printers to groups of users with Print Deploy

C: Deploy a single Find-Me Printer instead

D: Configure Restrictions PaperCut NG/MF

The surest way to achieve this is by using Mobility Print in tandem with Print Deploy, available with PaperCut NG and MF. 

Printers must be renamed using the print server’s operating system. Mobility server will automatically use this new name. When you change a printer’s name, the change will flow through to the Mobility Print server web interface after about five minutes. You should also consider cleaning up the old print queues .

You should also be aware that when you rename a printer, Windows and macOS end users need to remove the old printer queue and add the new one into their printer list.

This will depend on the kind of mobile device you are using and also the discovery option.

 

In situations where the printers are dynamically discovered (Android, Chrome, or iOS when connecting via mDNS or DNS) then the available printers should update automatically, or after the DNS Cache is flushed on the client.

 

In situations where the printer is added to the workstation using an installer (such as Windows, macOS, or iOS using the ‘known host’ discovery option) then an additional step may need to be taken by the user. On macOS or Windows this means deleting the print queue. On iOS this may mean uninstalling the Mobility Print profile.

We use anonymous setup information to prioritize feature development and functionality to address the majority of our users’ configurations. If you wish to opt out of sharing your anonymous setup configuration with PaperCut, please follow these steps:

1. Open the following file in a text editor:

   [app-path]/data/config/mobility-print.conf.toml

2. Set the following value:

   DisableAnalyticsSubmission = true

3. Save the file.

4. Restart the PaperCut Mobility Print service.

Yes, the Mobility Print server will allow you to customize the accessible port either by changing its listening port or by presenting its client links using another port such as 443 rather than the default 9164.

You can find the details on making this configuration change here.

The Mobility Print Admin interface locale is controlled by the Internet browser’s language setting.

For example, in Chrome if you want the locale used by the Mobility Print Admin interface set to en_UK, in the Languages dialog > Order languages based on your preference list, move the English (United Kingdom) option to the top of the list.

Cloud Print is free.

No, Mobility Print and the Cloud Print feature are available free of charge.

Mobility Print’s Cloud Print service does not access any personal information, whether it is personal metadata or print jobs, and will therefore not compromise your organization’s compliance to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For more information, read the Cloud Print security section.

If you’re interested in what other capabilities PaperCut NG/MF provides to help your organization comply with GDPR, take a look at the PaperCut GDPR compliance guide .

Users are only prompted for credentials if you’re using PaperCut NG/MF, in which case they use their existing PaperCut credentials.

No, users will have access to all printers you publish from the Mobility Print server. If you want different users to have access to different printers, then either deploy additional Mobility Print servers/VMs or use Print Deploy.

For information about STUN and TURN, see Cloud Print Security in Mobility Print .

No, there are no job size limitations in place.

Cloud Print makes use of Twillio’s Global Network Traversal service. That means when a client establishes a STUN or TURN connection with the Mobility Print server, it’s done over Twillio’s service.

Twillio doesn’t process any personal information at any level, whether it be the organizational, user, or print job level.

PaperCut MF’s Cloud Services still establish the end-to-end trust between the client and Mobility Print service. Twillio is only responsible for providing the transmission channel between the two.

Using Twillio or PaperCut’s MF’s Cloud Services will not compromise your organization’s GDPR compliance.

Cloud Print supports Chromebooks, macOS and Windows devices.

We’re monitoring demand for both iOS and Android. If this is critical for your organization, let us know at PaperCut Support . You can still print fom your local devices on the network using Mac, Windows, Chromebook, iOS and Android. For more details see the Setting up a device page.

So the invite link expiration date determines at what point end-users can no longer set up their devices using the link.

And the printing expiration date determines at what point printing stops for users after they have set up their client using the related invite link.

This means that you can allow a given period for users to sign up, and after that period expires no new users can sign up. The signed-up users can still print up to the printing expiration date.

For example, maybe you set up a link to allow a contractor to print for a certain period of time.

Not at the moment. Currently you can disable or re-enable a link that hasn’t expired. It might be something we look into in future.

You can create as many new links as you like, but understanding that rolling these out again may not be what people want.

Yes. Have a look at the Manage Cloud Print page .

There is no default setting. You need to explicitly click No expiry or select a specific date.

Yes, if you’re using Mobility Print together with PaperCut NG/MF. Check out the product comparison page.

When it comes to scale, you need to consider two ends. PaperCut MF’s Cloud Services and your Mobility Print server.

PaperCut MF’s Cloud Services are built on top of Google Cloud Platform and also makes use of Twillio’s Global Network Traversal service. The Cloud Print service scales horizontally and can handle pretty much any load thrown at it.

In regards to your Mobility Print server, there are a few factors to consider, including:

• the typical document size being printed

• your internet speed

• the server capacity.

If you have a decent machine with a decent network connection, then you should be fine with around 10,000 print jobs a week. If you are expecting more than this, especially if you expect spikes in printing, then consider deploying multiple Mobility Print servers.

At the moment you can’t yet deploy multiple Mobility Print servers in an active-active configuration to process your cloud print jobs. Instead, you will have to segment your usage and send different users invite links to different Mobility Print servers.

Yes. The only pre-requisite is that you need to upgrade Papercut NG/MF on your print servers to be version 17 or greater.

That’s because Mobility Print couldn’t detect a PaperCut Print Provider running on the server you installed Mobility Print on. Mobility Print requires a Print Provider to connect it to the PaperCut Application Server.

If you are seeing a user account with the name of  mobility-print-user, this account will be associated with Mobility Print jobs when operating in standalone mode (i.e. without PaperCut NG/MF). This is because in this mode Mobility Print does not perform authentication, and all jobs are ultimately attributed to a hardcoded value of mobility-print-user.

If you already have PaperCut NG/MF installed, ensure you install Mobility Print on the same machine as the PaperCut Print Provider.

This can be your PaperCut NG/MF Application Server or a secondary print server. If it’s a secondary server, ensure it has a Print Provider installed on it .

After the Print Provider is installed on the server, rerun the Mobility Print installer and it will connect with your existing PaperCut Application Server.

Account selection works in the same way as it does for any other PaperCut Mobile & BYOD solution. Users can assign an account at the MFD, via the User Client, or via the Mobile web client (or Mobile web client - web clip (for iOS devices). For more information, see Configure cost allocation

All print restrictions work, however, notifications of “denied jobs” might be limited depending on your notification settings.

For example, if notifications are delivered by the client software only, end-users using a mobile phone or Chromebook will not know that their job has been denied. Some restrictions, such as group access, are checked immediately at the time of print. These restrictions are always applied and users will be aware of them.

For more information, see Configure system notifications .

All PaperCut NG/MF configured print attribute conversions (for example, converting color jobs to black and white) work when you use Mobility Print.

Of course! Mobility Print supports secure print release and find-me printing .

If you have a Mobility Print server that has been uninstalled or is no longer in use and is showing as offline in the PaperCut MF Admin Interface, there are two options to remove this:

1. The entry in the admin interface will be automatically removed after it has been offline and not heard from for 7 days.
2. Restarting the PaperCut Application Server Service will remove the entry immediately.

Yes! You can set up Mobility Print on any Windows secondary server, including sites with a Site Server instead of an Application Server. With PaperCut 17.0, you need to perform a few extra setup steps to get this working. For more information, see Set up Mobility Print with a Site Server .

If you are running PaperCut NG/MF 17.1 or higher Yes. Otherwise, there must be a connection between the Site Server and the Application Server for Mobility Print to work. See [Set up Mobility Print with a Site Server](/mobility-print/set-up/configure/advanced-configuration/site-server-support/)

All user login credentials are secure and encrypted. Where possible, industry standard HTTPS/TLS is used. Print jobs on Android, macOS, and iOS are secure as they use HTTPS. Print jobs on Chromebooks are encrypted using AES with a 256-bit key length.

Absolutely. Mobility Print has the same level of security and authentication as any other PaperCut NG/MF feature. User identification is checked before a job is accepted. See User authentication in How it works for details.

The answer to this question depends on your device.

• iOS - You need to enter your login details the first time you print, then your device will remember your details forever. On iOS 10, you can, however, ask your device to forget your details. To do this:
  1. When you print from your device, a Printer List is displayed. Tap the Information icon next to a printer.
  2. At the bottom of the Details screen, tap Forget my Username and Password.
• macOS - On the login screen, there’s an Add to keychain checkbox. If you select this checkbox, your login details will be remembered forever. If you come across “hold for authentication” when printing, see Hold for Authentication KB article for more details.
• Windows - You don’t need to enter your login details when you print a job; you enter them only once, when you add a printer.
• ChromeOS - On the login screen there’s a Remember me checkbox. If you select this checkbox, your login details will be remembered for the selected printer for 30 days by default.
• Android - On the login screen there’s a Remember me checkbox. If you select this checkbox, your login details will be remembered for the selected printer for 30 days default.
  
  The 30 day time period to remember user login is adjustable up to 365 days. For instructions on configuring the login duration and for more information about authentication, see Mobility Print Authentication .

Most likely this is because Mobility Print is not set up to work with PaperCut NG/MF.

On its own, Mobility Print doesn’t offer authentication. But when you’re running Mobility Print without PaperCut NG/MF, users won’t need to authenticate when printing to published printers.

You might need to install a secondary server in the same location that you installed Mobility Print. After you’ve installed it, you’ll need to rerun the Mobility Print installer.