Ledge

How to print several files at once on a Mac without opening each

· 7 min read

You do not have to open every document and press Command-P in each one. Select the files in Finder and choose File > Print, drag them onto your printer’s icon in the Dock, or combine them into one PDF and print that once. For PDFs, images and plain text, a single Terminal command also works.

Method one: File > Print in Finder

This is the quickest route when the files are already in one folder.

  1. Select the files in a Finder window. Press Command-A for everything, Shift-click for a run of files, or Command-click to pick them one at a time. How to drag files that are not next to each other has more on selecting.
  2. Choose File > Print, or press Command-P.
  3. Finder opens each document in the app it normally opens with and sends it to the printer.

Depending on the app, a job either goes straight to your default printer or a print dialog appears for each file. With a dozen files that can mean a dozen dialogs, so it suits a handful of documents better than a big stack.

Two things to keep in mind. The files print through their default apps, so a PDF goes through Preview and a text file through TextEdit. And those apps may still be open afterward, so quit them when the jobs are done.

Method two: drag files onto the printer icon

Every printer you add to a Mac gets its own queue app. While something is printing, that queue’s icon shows in the Dock. You can keep it there permanently and use it as a drop target.

  1. Print anything, so the printer’s icon appears in the Dock.
  2. Control-click the icon and choose Options > Keep in Dock.
  3. From now on, drag documents onto that icon to print them.

If nothing is printing right now, you can still reach the queue. Open System Settings > Printers & Scanners, click your printer, and use the button that opens its queue. The queue apps also live in a folder: in Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder, type ~/Library/Printers, and drag the printer’s icon into the Dock from there.

Files dropped this way print with the printer’s default settings, with no dialog in between. That makes it ideal for everyday printing and less useful when you need special options such as a page range.

Method three: combine into one PDF, then print once

When the order matters, or you want double-sided printing across several documents, one PDF is the tidiest answer. You set the options once and the pages come out in sequence.

  1. In Finder, select the PDFs and images you want to print.
  2. Control-click the selection and choose Quick Actions > Create PDF. A new PDF appears beside the first file.
  3. Open it in Preview and choose View > Thumbnails. Check the page order in the sidebar and drag thumbnails to reorder them if needed.
  4. Choose File > Print, set copies, two-sided printing and paper size, and print.

Create PDF works on PDFs and images. For a word processor document, export it as a PDF first. Nearly every Mac app can do this from its print dialog: choose File > Print, open the PDF menu at the bottom, and choose Save as PDF.

Method four: one Terminal command

For PDFs, common image formats and plain text, the lpr command prints several files in one go with no dialogs at all. Open Terminal from Applications > Utilities.

To see your printers and which one is the default:

lpstat -p -d

To print files on the default printer, type lpr with a space, then drag each file into the Terminal window so its path is typed for you, and press Return:

lpr ~/Downloads/boarding-pass.pdf ~/Desktop/map.png

A few options are worth knowing:

  • -P Printer_Name sends the job to a specific printer. Use the name exactly as lpstat shows it.
  • -# 2 prints two copies.
  • -o sides=two-sided-long-edge prints double-sided, if the printer supports it.
  • -o page-ranges=1 prints only the first page of each file.

The limit is formats. lpr does not know how to lay out word processor documents, so export those to PDF first. If paths in Terminal are new to you, paste a file path into a terminal the easy way explains what each drop types.

When the files are in different places

A real print run is rarely one tidy folder. The boarding pass is in Downloads, the form came attached to an email, the map is a screenshot on the desktop, and the itinerary is in a project folder. Every method above works best when you can select everything together.

Ledge makes the gathering one gesture per file. As you come across each document, drag it up to the notch at the top of the screen and let go; it lands on a shelf that drops from the notch and stays there. When the set is complete, open the shelf with Option-Space or a click on the notch.

From there you have two choices. Drag the whole set onto a Finder folder, and the files themselves move into it, ready for Create PDF and a single print. Or drag them onto the printer’s icon in the Dock, which prints them and leaves each file where it lives. On a Mac without a notch, the shelf sits at the top center of the screen and works the same way. How to gather files from different folders in one spot has more on building a set like this.

Ledge has no account and no cloud, so the documents never leave the Mac on their way to the printer.

Questions

Why did my files print in a different order than I selected them?

Each file becomes its own print job, and jobs can reach the printer in the order their apps finish preparing them. When order matters, combine the files into one PDF and print that.

Can I print all of them double-sided without changing each one?

Yes, with the combined PDF: set two-sided once in the print dialog. With Terminal, add -o sides=two-sided-long-edge. Files dropped on the printer icon use the printer’s defaults.

How do I cancel a batch that is printing the wrong thing?

Click the printer’s icon in the Dock to open its queue, select the jobs, and delete them. Pages already sent to the printer may still come out.