Restoring deleted printers when upgrading macOS

When upgrading macOS versions, an issue may occur where your print queues are removed/deleted from CUPS. This has most recently been seen when upgrading from macOS 26.1 to macOS 26.2, but has also been seen in previous OS upgrades.

This issue is outside of the PaperCut environment (this issue can happen whether you’re using PaperCut products or not) and is likely caused by a version change or significant change in CUPS.

Normally this would mean that you would have to set up your print queues on your macOS machine again from scratch (through System Settings > Printers and Scanners). That is a perfectly valid method, but if you have lots of printers that need recreating, you can also check the CUPS printers configuration file to see if there is a backup file containing all your original printers.

To restore your previous CUPS printers:

1. Open a terminal window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app)

2. Navigate to /etc/cups by typing:
   cd /etc/cups

3. There will be a file called printers.conf (this is the ’live’ list of printers that CUPS uses) and a number of backups of this file.

   • If you are not using the PaperCut print provider on this machine (or if you’re not using PaperCut products at all), you may only see one backup file, e.g. printers.conf.O
   • If you are using the PaperCut print provider on this machine, the Print Provider takes a backup of the printers.conf file any time it makes a change to the config file - so you may see multiple files with the name format e.g. printers.conf.2025-12-16-22-03-43 (timestamped to the time of the backup).

4. Locate the last backup file prior to the macOS OS upgrade. Make note of this filename and use it for the <backup conf file> below.

5. Stop CUPS:

   sudo launchctl stop org.cups.cupsd
(you will be asked for your local admin password)

6. Backup the current printers.conf file just in case:

   sudo mv printers.conf printers.conf.bak

7. Replace the printers.conf file with the last backup:

   sudo cp <backup conf file> printers.conf
e.g. you might use sudo cp printers.conf.2025-12-16-22-03-43 printers.conf

8. Restart CUPS:

   sudo launchctl start org.cups.cupsd

9. Open a browser window and navigate to http://localhost:631

10. Click the Printers tab

    Note: you may need to re-enable the Web UI - in the terminal window enter cupsctl WebInterface=yes if instructed to do so.

11. Confirm your print queues have all returned!