What you’ll need
friendly interface. The walkthrough opposite will help you with this part of the process.
Once you’ve successfully printed a test page, there’s just one last tweak: switch to CUPS’ Administration tab, turn on ‘Share printers connected to this system’ (and ‘Allow printing from the internet’ if required), then click ‘Change Settings’. Your printer will now be set up, shared and ready for the final stage.
SET UP AIRPRINT
The Pi’s Wi-Fi adaptor has power management switched on, which can cause problems, so let’s disable it (its power consumption is minimal anyway). In Terminal, enter sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces. Find the first line that begins ‘wpaconf’, and on a new line directly beneath it, above the ‘allow-hotplug wlan1’ line, type: wireless-power off.
Press +x, then y when prompted to save your changes. Close the Terminal window, then reboot your Pi Zero for the change to take effect. To verify your settings, enter ifconfig in Terminal. If there’s no reference to power management, it has been disabled.
The final step of the process is simply to install a single app to enable AirPrint support, again from the command line: sudo apt-get install avahi-discover. Once done, that is literally it. On your iPad or iPhone you should find your printer is now visible as an AirPrint destination and, crucially, that it works.
MAKE IT HEADLESS
There’s no need to keep the keyboard or monitor connected now, but it’s handy to perform a few tweaks should you need to access the Pi Zero later on. First, support for command-line access via your Mac’s Terminal app is already set up – just enter the following command to log on: ssh pi@ raspberrypi. local and enter yes when prompted, followed by your password, which is raspberry, and you’ll find yourself at the Pi’s command line. If you want remote access to the Pi’s graphical desktop, you’ll need to install VNC software on it.
You can now shut down your Pi Zero, disconnect the keyboard and monitor, then power it back up. Congratulations, your printer is now AirPrint-enabled and easily accessible from other computers too.