How to print from a mobile device or Android tablet

Posted on 9 April 2012

Every day there is an increasing number of options to make our smartphone or tablet fit into a real tool for everything. The integration of these devices with other computers is the order of the day, and that makes the possibilities to increase exponentially. Today we will talk about how to print documents, photos and web pages with your Android device through a very useful tool launched by Google called Google Cloud Print.

Google Cloud Print is a service that allows you to connect printers to your Google account and then print files from the web. A novel idea that is very useful. Printers with WiFi and are enabled for use with Cloud Print can be used directly, but printers that have only local connection will be connected to a computer need to be on. Some examples of the former are the HP printers with ePrint and some Kodak and Epson models ready to print from the cloud (you can see the list and instructions for connecting via the Google page). For traditional printers, you must enable the feature through a Chrome browser. If you have not downloaded, you can from the official website.

To enable the Google Cloud Print connector, we access the program settings via the icon of a wrench that is in the top right. Then look for the option “Settings” and click. You should go to the “Advanced” and then click on “Enable the Google Cloud Print connector.” We then “Finish Printer Registration” and the printers connected to your computer will appear among our options for Internet printing.

Cloud Print

Then, from the same Chrome configuration, you can access the “Manage Print Settings” which will have appeared next to the button given above. From this panel we can see the print jobs sent, add new printers or share them via “Share” with others using Google Cloud Print. Once you’ve configured everything, we can print documents and images through our Android device. Keep in mind that, unless we already have Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s platform has no browser available. To print, you have to use one of Print Cloud enabled applications that are available in Google Play (the new Android Market).

We have chosen for this purpose the Cloud Print application, a simple but quite useful App that integrates seamlessly with the system to print documents, images and even web pages. Once the application is installed, will ask your permission to connect to your Google account and sync the Google Cloud Print printers. Through “Printer Management“, we can decide which is the default printer. You can use multiple accounts with Google Cloud Print in the same application by going to “Settings” and then “Add Account” (this adds to your Google account). From the local tab we can print our photos, contacts, messages and documents stored on your phone, or even perform a scan through the camera. You can also work through Web services like Gmail or Picasa by following the instructions given in the program.

But something I find really useful is that Cloud Print is integrated into the system context menu and allows printing directly from other applications through the “share” feature. Thus, for example we can print Web pages. In short, a very useful option to print from anywhere our documents and files.