The Wrong Printer
macOS is designed to seamlessly integrate into changing environments, especially for laptop users. To facilitate this, macOS employs a feature that automatically manages your default printer based on your physical location. If you print a document at the office using the “Office Laser” printer, macOS sets that as the default. When you go home and print a recipe using the “Home Inkjet,” macOS instantly changes the default to the Inkjet. While intended to save you a click, it frequently causes problems if you are connected to a VPN, or if you primarily use one printer but occasionally use a specific photo printer, resulting in documents constantly being sent to the wrong physical tray.
Locking the Default Choice
To establish a permanent hardware priority and stop macOS from automatically changing your default printer based on your last used device, you must explicitly define a static default in the system settings.
Click the Apple logo in the extreme top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings from the dropdown menu. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, scroll down to the bottom and click on Printers & Scanners. Look at the right-hand panel, below the list of all your installed printers. You will see a dropdown menu labelled explicitly Default printer. By default, this is usually set to “Last Printer Used.” Click this dropdown menu and select the specific, exact name of the printer you want to use 99% of the time (e.g., “Brother HL-L2350DW”). Once selected, macOS will lock this choice. Regardless of which printer you used yesterday or where your laptop is currently located, every new print job will default to this specific machine until you manually change it.