from the desk of stinkpot

print from the command line in mac os x

September 27th, 2008 by Lawrence David

let’s say you want to print all of the pdf files in a directory quickly.  printing from the command line in these situations can be handy.  here’s how to do it:

 >> lpstat -a 

 will give you a list of all of the installed printer names.

>> lp -d “my_printer_name” ~/my_folder/*.pdf 

will send out all of those pdf files to be printed! 

Posted in Mac OS X | 4 Comments »

if that was helpful ...

check out the other tips and tricks i've compiled on these pages. you might learn something else interesting!

4 Responses to “print from the command line in mac os x”

1. on 10 Dec 2011 at 12:49 pm   Michael Howitz

   The default page size to print on seems to be “letter” to switch it e. g. to “a4″ add the option “-o media=”. Example:

   >> lp -d “my_printer_name” -o media=A4 ~/my_folder/*.pdf

2. on 27 Feb 2012 at 2:08 pm   Printing Email from Mutt on OS X – The Only Winning Move

   [...] get the same effect, but I haven’t tried that one. I got my info from Lawrence David, and it worked, so I’m happy with [...]

3. on 04 Jul 2012 at 11:08 am   locke

   This assisted me. And for that, I am grateful.

4. on 06 May 2015 at 5:52 am   Alan

   Many thanks. Brillant to see old UNIX stuff still being useful on Mac OS X 10.8.