Drag-and-drop printing

toweltowel
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I just had another "Coolest Thing Ever(tm)" moment. I needed to print out a few dozen HTML files. For the first dozen, I open then all in Safari, individually hit Cmd-P, return, close, repeat. There must be a better way. Google turns up an Apple Pro Tip for creating a Desktop printer. You can drag a file onto the printer icon, and it will either print directly or open the proper application's print dialog. Even better, you can drag the icon into your Finder's sidebar. It also works just as well with the printer's Dock icon. Even better, the list of direct-print file types apparently includes any that Cocoa handles natively - PDF, text, and [drumroll] HTML.



My new workflow? Highlight a few dozen files in a Finder window. Drag them all to the printer icon in the sidebar/Dock. Go eat a cookie.



I love OS X.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    jonnyboyjonnyboy Posts: 525member
    schweet.



    if i had a printer i'd do this right now. just for the hell of it!
  • Reply 2 of 6
    jwink3101jwink3101 Posts: 739member
    It works great with PDFs but is not so amazing with with word files. It didn't bring up the print dialogue. Rather, it printed a blank new document. I use it when i am losing track of what needs to be printed so i print it all to PDFs in one folder and then let the printer just go through them all.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    curmicurmi Posts: 70member
    Unfortunately there is no way to bring up a print dialog (as far as I can see) - so if you want to choose print options, duplexing, or number of copies, you can't do that. Shame we can't hold down option say while dragging or something like that to bring up a dialog.



    Also, you can set up a drag and drop fax - but it doesn't work at all because it needs a dialog to choose the number to fax too. :-(



    Drag and drop printing seems to be only half implemented if you ask me - a bit like a last minute addition.



    Now drag and drop faxing on OS/2 was interesting. You could drag an address from the address book to the document, and it attached a small address marker to the icon. Then you dragged the document to the fax, and it faxed it to the fax number in the address. A little bizarre, not intuitive perhaps, but interesting...
  • Reply 4 of 6
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Well, I found out when I checked the workgroup printer that it doesn't print rendered HTML; it prints .html files as raw text. Doh. Killed a decent-sized tree learning that lesson. It would be insanely cool if it could render the HTML with WebKit on-the-fly, but such is not the case.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    You can also drag any folder from the Finder to the Desktop Printer to replicate the missing "Print Finder Window" command in Panther.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    vox barbaravox barbara Posts: 2,021member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by curiousuburb

    You can also drag any folder from the Finder to the Desktop Printer to replicate the missing "Print Finder Window" command in Panther.



    Ah good hint, welcome, so easy
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