How to Print in Black & White on Mac

How to Print in Black & White on Mac

Many printers used with a Mac support printing in black and white or grayscale. B printing can offer a simple way to boost the contrast of documents but it also allows you to reduce the amount of color ink used when you print out a document, article, or webpage. Printing in black and white on a Mac is pretty easy, but the feature is sometimes tucked away in a print setting, depending on the printer that a Mac is configured to use, and the print driver in use too. Well cover two ways to print in black and white from a Mac. Keep in mind that which B printing method is available to your Mac usually depends on the printer in use, and if that printer directly supports black and white printing or not. Some printers dont support black and white printing at all.

Some printers make printing in black and white very easy, if you go to print a file and immediately see a Black & White toggle box, check it to print in black and white only. Otherwise here is how to print in black and white from a Mac. This can be used to print in black and white or grayscale on many printers. Sometimes the black and white options will be under Color Options as Mono or Black Cartridge Only, and verbiage may be slightly different depending on the printer, the printer drivers, and the Mac OS version used.

This is a nice trick for printing in general, but its particularly helpful when youre trying to conserve ink when that dont really benefit from color ink usage. If the printer does not support black and white printing, you will not have options to print in black and white. If youre going to print black and white or grayscale on a Mac but the option is missing from the Print window, yet you know your printer supports grayscale and/or black and white printing mode, you may have to perform a few basic troubleshooting steps. Typically this means either resetting the print system in Mac OS or deleting the printer, updating the driver, and then re-adding the printer.

You may need to download new drivers or updated drivers for your printer as well, depending on the printer itself, and the printer manufacturer. This only works on a printer that would support grayscale or black and white printing in the first place, you cant force a printer that doesnt have that feature to suddenly have an ability it does not support. With that said, another option would be to convert a document to black and white or grayscale, and then print that out (even via a printer that doesnt directly support black and white printing) and that could work too, but thats a topic for another post.