How to See the Print History on Your Mac Computer

Viewing Current and Completed Print Jobs on Your Mac

Managing print jobs on your Mac can be straightforward, especially when you need to track what has been printed or is currently in the print queue. Here’s how you can view both current and completed print jobs.

Viewing Current Print Jobs

To see what is currently printing, follow these steps:

1. Check the Printer Icon in the Dock: When you send a job to your printer, the Printer icon appears in the Dock. A red badge on the icon indicates that the printer is currently printing, and the number on the badge shows the number of jobs in the queue.
2. Open Print Queue from System Preferences:
   • Go to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners.
   • Select your printer on the left.
   • Click the Open Print Queue button for your printer. This will open a small window showing the current print job.

Viewing Completed Print Jobs

To see completed print jobs, follow these steps:

1. Access Completed Jobs via System Preferences:
   • Go to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners.
   • Select your printer on the left.
   • Click Window > Show Completed Jobs from the menu bar. A pop-up window will display showing completed jobs with details such as status, item name, user who printed it, and the date and time the job was sent to the printer and completed.
2. View Completed Jobs for Shared Printers:
   • To see completed jobs by everyone for a shared printer, click Jobs > Show Everyone’s Jobs from the menu bar. To see only your jobs again, click Jobs > Show My Jobs.

Using the CUPS Web Interface

For a more detailed view of your print history, you can use the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) web interface:

1. Open Your Web Browser:
   • Launch your favorite web browser.
   • In the address bar, type http://localhost:631.
2. Access Print History:
   • Click on “Jobs” in the menu.
   • Click “Show Completed Jobs” to display your Mac’s print history. This will show details such as the printer, name of the file that was printed, the user who completed the print job, size of the printed document, the number of pages, and the date of the printed file completion or attempt.
3. Enable the Web Interface if Necessary:
   • If the web interface is disabled, you can enable it using the Terminal command: cupsctl WebInterface=yes && open http://localhost:631/jobs?which_jobs=all.

Recovering Printed Files

macOS stores a copy of every print job in the /var/spool/cups directory. Here’s how you can recover these files:

1. Access the Print Job Files:
   • Open Finder and navigate to /var/spool/cups.
   • Copy an item to your Desktop and rename the file extension to .pdf to make it viewable.
2. Using Terminal:
   • Open a Terminal window and navigate to the /var/spool/cups directory using the command sudo ls /var/spool/cups.
   • Copy a file to your Desktop using the command sudo cp /var/spool/cups/FILENAME /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/FILENAME.pdf, replacing FILENAME with the name of the file you want to copy and USERNAME with your machine’s username.

Deleting Print Job History

If you want to delete the stored print job files, you can do so by deleting the files in the /var/spool/cups directory:

1. Delete Files via Finder:
   • Open Finder and navigate to /var/spool/cups.
   • Delete any items in that folder. Be cautious not to delete other important files.

By following these steps, you can effectively manage and view your print history on your Mac, ensuring you have full control over your printing activities.