Despite the benefits of a paperless office, it’s still useful to keep a hard copy of some documents or images. Most of us have printers at home which we use for our personal work. Sometimes, you may need to print something interesting that you have found while browsing the web on your mobile. How would you print it using your home printer? The answer is by using Google’s free cloud printing service.
What Is Google Cloud Print?
In order to use Google Cloud Print, you only need a Google account (and a printer). After setting it up, you can print anything on your home printer from any Android device across the world – or from any computer, for that matter.
Set Up Google Cloud Print Service
To set up this service on your Android device, you need to download and install the Cloud Print app.
Main Interface of Cloud Print App
After installing the app, launch it. The main interface as shown above has quite a few options, though I only found three of these to be useful – the rest are for users with more advanced requirements. As we have not yet set up the service yet, tap the Settings option to integrate your Google Cloud Print account with your smartphone.
Once you are on the Settings page, just log in to your Google account and then the app will show you three options among which you have to choose any one option. In the below screenshot, you can see that it is asking for the printer type you have – if you are unsure, just choose Other Printers as it suits almost all types. If you do not have a printer but still want to use this service with Google Docs, then just choose “Google Cloudprint ready”. It will then ask you whether you want to set it as the default printer, so press Yes.
Select your Printer Type
You have now successfully configured the Cloud Print app to work with your Google account. Next, let’s send some print jobs to the printer via the app, to test the service.
Using Cloud Print
Cloud Print integrates itself with the default Android Share menu, so you can print from any relevant app.
Cloud Print option in Share Menu
To test this out, take a photo, press Share, and tap Cloud Print. It will lead you to the confirmation page, where you need to confirm whether you really want to print it or not.
Confirm the Printing Job
The confirmation screen shows the file’s name and icon. Here, you can tap “Page setup” to configure options for the page on which your file will be printed – size, orientation, and so on. Once you have finished, just tap “Click here to Print”. The app will then upload the file to the Cloud Print servers so it can be sent to your assigned printer. You can also cancel the print job by tapping the Cancel Upload option.
After the file is sent for printing, the next time you connect to your Cloud Print account, the job will automatically be sent to your printer. You will still have the chance to cancel the print job before this point.
Printing Jobs Details
After sending the print job, you will see the above screen. It shows how many pages have been printed, their creation date, and so on. By opening Print Jobs, you can see all the print jobs that you have sent to your Cloud Printer using this app. It is a handy feature as sometimes you may need to review what you have sent, or modify the jobs.
Conclusion
I highly recommend this Cloud Print service to all the people out there who are using Android smartphones and especially those who travel a lot, as you will be able to easily send images to be printed at your home.
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