If you have a printer plugged into your Windows 10 PC, you can share it with the other computers and devices connected to the same local network. It is a useful feature if you don't want to physically move the printer each time you use it to print something from another computer. Sharing your printer on the network means that you can access it from any of your devices, as long as the main computer, which the shared printer is plugged into, is on and running Windows 10. Without further ado, here's how to share a printer on a network, from Windows 10:
How to share a printer on the network, in Windows 10
In order to share the printer connected to your Windows 10 PC with the network, you must first open the Settings app. A quick way to do it is to click or tap on its button from the Start Menu.
In the Settings app, open the Devices category.
On the left sidebar of the Devices category, select the Printer & scanners tab.
On the right side of the window, select the printer that you want to share on the network.
When you select your printer, a few buttons are displayed: click or tap on Manage.
This action opens a page called "Manage your device". Look for a link called "Printer properties" and click or tap on it.
Windows 10 opens the Properties window of your printer. This is where you can share your printer on the network.
Regardless of your printer's make and model, you should see something like the screenshot below:
NOTE: There's also an alternative way of opening your printer's Properties window to share your printer with the network: open Control Panel, go to "View devices and printers" under "Hardware and Sound", right-click (or press and hold) on your printer, and then select Printer properties from the contextual menu.
In your printer's Properties window, select the Sharing tab.
On the Sharing tab, select the "Share this printer" option and, if you want, type a friendly name for your printer to easily identify it when you connect to it from other Windows 10 computers or devices in your network.
Underneath the Share name field, the "Render print jobs on client computers" setting is enabled by default. We recommend leaving it on, as rendering the print jobs on client devices means that those print jobs are processed by the devices that start them, not by the computer which the printer is plugged into. In other words, the client devices are in charge of the printing processing, so your Windows 10 computer does not have to do additional work whenever a secondary PC tries to print something on the shared printer.
That's it! Now your printer is shared with all the computers and devices in your local network.
However, before saving your settings and closing all the windows, you might also want to check the next section of this guide, to see how to install additional drivers for your shared printer:
How to install additional drivers for a printer shared with the network, in Windows 10
If you have computers or devices in your network that are using other versions of Windows, you might want to also provide them with Additional Drivers for your shared printer. As Microsoft specifies, if you "[...] install additional drivers, [...] users do not have to find the print driver when they connect to the shared printer." If you want to ease their lives, push the Additional Drivers button.
This opens the Additional Drivers window. In it, select the additional drivers that you want to provide for the network computers and devices that connect to your shared printer. Depending on your printer, you should have options to enable additional drivers for various types of processors and operating system architectures. Select the additional drivers that you want to install for your shared printer, and then click or tap on OK. However, note that, on the next step, you need to tell Windows 10 where to get the additional drivers, so you should download them from your printer's support website before that.
Windows 10 asks you where to get the printer drivers that you selected on the previous step. Browse or type the path to the folder that contains the additional drivers for your shared printer.
Push the OK button from the "Install print drivers," and, almost instantly, Windows 10 should get the additional drivers and close the window bearing the same name. Finally, click or tap on Apply and then on OK to save your settings and start sharing your printer on the network.
That was it!
Next comes the part where you have to install the shared printer on the computers and devices on which you need to use it. If you need help with that, these guides should help you out:
- How to install a wireless printer in your home network, in 6 steps
- How to install a local printer on your Windows computer
- The Geek's Way of Managing Printers - The Print Management Console
Did you find it easy to share your local printer with the network, in Windows 10?
It is rather easy to share your printer on the network, from Windows 10. Did you manage to go through the whole process fast and without issues? Also, if you have any questions on how to share your printer with the network, don't hesitate to ask in the comments section below.
Discussion (24)
Followed every single step. Laptop can see printer connected to Desktop but doesn’t recognise it as a printer
Just looking at Printer & networks for Windows for It.108 class to comments Rob.
Would be nice if the author could explain at the end of the article what the word “render” actually means. The instructions as written don’t give me enough information to understand whether or not to check the box.
this was very helpful thanks
this helped a lot, but whenever the pc where the printer is connected restarts, all the other pc on the network cant connect again to the printer, thus, i have to remove the printer from the devices and printers again and reinstall it. so goes to the other pcs on the network. Is there a way so that it would be permanent? ii already tried using static ip. still the same.
We can all connect to our Network printer, but only one PC can print with the correct settings 🙁 As we use listing paper for our 5-part invoices, we’ve checked everything in the settings, but none of the other networks print so the paper lines up. Very annoying!
On windows 7… that your printer is hooked to… you have to turn off the user sharing password in the home groups…. it is under advanced settings….
my Windows 7 Pro PC (printer is attached to this PC) and my Windows XP home PC,, tried to add a printer on the XP machine after installing the printer drivers on it, and it cannot find the printer on the network. Didn’t work for me.
how can share printer hp laser jet m1005 for three pc
Hello,
My XP computer finds the printer in the list of available printers but still can’t connect because of permissions
thank you
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If you are in a work enviroment you have to have a passowrd for every user ( i dont know how that works) but you can deactivate that in the shared use options under “shared use advanced settings” : loo for “password protection” and deactivate it.
IN THIS TYPE IN CHECK
Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsNetwork and Sharing CenterAdvanced sharing settings
SELECT home group connection in allow window manage homegroup conncection tick and ok
This is a problem with Windows 7. The only “easy” way to share a printer with Windows 7 is to set up a homegroup. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help in a work environment because the only way to join a homegroup is to change your network settings to a “home” environment. Sharing printers from Windows 7 is, and always will be, problematic. Best solution? Network your printer(s). If your printer is not ethernet ready, buy a print server. Shame on Microsoft because not only are they aware of the problem, they continue to furnish instructions for sharing that simply won’t work. Fix the problem or tell everyone that you won’t.
Windows 7 seems to be very paranoiac in terms to share something with others.
I did everything exactly as stated above on my Windows 7 Pro laptop (printer is attached to this laptop). Tried to add a printer on the XP machine after installing the printer drivers on it, and it cannot find the printer on the network. Didn’t work for me.
At home I bought the additional printer for XP machine – today simple laser printers does not cost much – less, then to hassle around with this problem.
At one workplace printer is shared in XP network with user names but no password to log on.
For Win 7 machine this is insurmountable problem!!! So they bought another printer for me – easier to do, no need to change the whole network.
for those having problems setting the printer to share: microsoft notes that windows firewall being disabled in services is the problem. even if turned off the firewall must be set to automatic in services, and started
I have three computers networked. They are Win7 64 bit, Win7 32 bit, and XP-Pro 32 bit.
I have all the printer drivers set to full share.
I found that there are no problems to share the printers between the two 32 bit systems. The Win7 64 bit computer seems to not be able to share the printers residing on the XP-Pro 32 bit computer.
Jerry G.
You cannot share a printer residing on another computer. You can just connect to it and use it. However, you will need to install 64-bit drivers for your printer on the 64-bit system.
I did everything as described, it found the printer shared everything shows and it installed the printer. When I go to print a test page, it shows it prints it in the que on both computers, but the file just hangs there and does not print. Any suggestions?
Maybe some technical problems? Like connection cable doesn’t really work, a contact is loose. It doesn’t “sound” like a software problem.
go to printer property, port and sellect virtual port w
This didn’t work for me either. I wish it would have been this easy. I followed all the steps and the remote computer sees the shared printer but can never connect to it.
I did everything exactly as stated above on my Windows 7 Pro PC (printer is attached to this PC) and my Windows XP home PC,, tried to add a printer on the XP machine after installing the printer drivers on it, and it cannot find the printer on the network. Didn’t work for me.