OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Setting Up Printers, Fax Modems, and Scanners

You can connect your printer, fax modem, and scanner to your Mac in any of several ways, depending on your device's capabilities. These include using USB, FireWire, wired network (Ethernet), wireless network (Wi-Fi), and Bluetooth wireless connections. If your device uses any of the wireless or Ethernet settings, refer to its manual to see how to set it up so your Mac can see it, such as specifying its IP address if it's an Ethernet or Wi-Fi device or making it discoverable if it's a Bluetooth device. Devices that connect directly to the Mac via a USB or FireWire cable usually need no special setup on the printer itself.

Your printer, fax modem, or scanner may have come with an installation CD or instructions for downloading its installation software from the web. In such cases, you typically need to run this software before the device is connected to copy the drivers the Mac needs to properly work it. But in some cases, you need to run this software after the device is connected. And in other cases, OS X already has the drivers needed to use the device, so there's no need to run a setup program. Again, check your device's setup instructions.

Note

OS X installs drivers for any printers, fax modems, and scanners used previously on that Mac (if you are upgrading from a previous version) or that it detects (if you are installing OS X for the first time). That saves hard disk space. If you later add a printer and have an Internet connection, ...