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A printer that takes forever to start, crawls through pages, or pauses mid-job is frustrating — particularly when you're in a hurry. The good news is that slow printing is almost always caused by something fixable: a setting, a file, a connection issue, or a backed-up queue. Here's how to work through the most likely causes in order.
Check Your Print Quality Settings First
This is the most common cause of slow printing and the easiest to fix. High-quality and photo print modes send significantly more data to the printer per page, which means more processing time before a single sheet comes out. If your printer is set to Best or Photo mode for everyday documents, switching to Standard or Normal will make a noticeable difference immediately.
Draft or Economy mode is faster still and works well for internal documents, reference prints, or anything you're going to read once and discard. Most printers allow you to set a default quality mode — changing this to Standard rather than leaving it at High Quality means you only switch up when the output genuinely needs it, rather than printing everything at maximum quality by default.
Reduce File Size Where Possible
Printers have to process files before they print them, and large or complex files take significantly longer. A high-resolution image embedded in a Word document, a PDF with dozens of pages of detailed graphics, or a file that hasn't been properly formatted for print can all cause the printer to sit processing for a long time before the first page appears.
A few things that help: flatten complex PDFs before printing (in Adobe Acrobat: File → Print → Advanced → Print as Image is a useful fallback for difficult files); reduce image resolution in documents where the output quality doesn't require maximum detail; and avoid printing directly from a web browser where possible, since browser-rendered pages often contain significantly more data than a clean document export.
Clear the Print Queue
A stuck or backed-up print queue can bring everything to a halt. If a previous job failed, paused, or got stuck, subsequent jobs queue behind it and nothing moves until the blockage is cleared.
On Windows, go to Settings → Bluetooth & Devices → Printers & Scanners → your printer → Open Print Queue. Cancel any jobs that are paused, stuck, or showing an error. If the queue won't clear, restarting the Print Spooler service usually resolves it: open Services (search for it in the Start menu), find Print Spooler, right-click and select Restart. On a Mac, go to System Settings → Printers & Scanners → your printer → Open Print Queue and delete any stuck jobs there.
After clearing the queue, restart the printer before sending a new job.
Check Your Connection Type
Wireless printing is convenient but it introduces variables that a wired connection doesn't have — signal strength, interference from other devices, and network congestion can all add latency. For most everyday printing this doesn't matter, but if your printer is far from the router, on a weak signal, or sharing a busy network, it can contribute to slow performance.
If speed is important and your printer and computer are physically close, connecting with a USB cable bypasses the wireless connection entirely and typically produces faster, more consistent performance. This is worth trying if you've ruled out settings and file size as causes and are still seeing unexplained slowness.
If you want to keep using wireless, make sure the printer is connected to your 2.4GHz band rather than 5GHz — most home inkjet printers perform more reliably on 2.4GHz. Our post on fixing Wi-Fi printer connection issues covers this in detail.
Update Printer Drivers and Firmware
Outdated printer drivers can cause communication delays between your computer and printer, particularly after a Windows or macOS update has changed how the operating system handles print jobs. An updated driver often resolves performance issues that appeared after a system update without any other obvious cause.
On Windows, go to Settings → Bluetooth & Devices → Printers & Scanners → your printer → Manage → Update Driver. On a Mac, check System Settings → Printers & Scanners for driver updates. You can also check the manufacturer's website directly and download the latest driver for your specific printer model.
Printer firmware updates — the software built into the printer itself — are worth checking separately. These are usually available through the printer's own menu, the manufacturer's app, or the support section of the manufacturer's website.
Print in Batches Rather Than Single Jobs
Some printers handle the initialisation process — warming up, running a quick maintenance check, establishing the connection — each time a new job is sent. If you're printing several single-page documents one at a time, the startup overhead multiplies with each job.
Where possible, combine pages into a single print job rather than sending them separately. Printing a ten-page document is almost always faster than printing ten one-page documents in sequence. If you regularly print similar documents, consider whether they can be combined into a single file before printing.
Restart the Printer Regularly
Printers, like computers, accumulate temporary data in memory over time. A printer that's been left on for weeks without a restart can slow down as its memory fills up — particularly if it's handled a large number of jobs or a few very large ones.
Switching the printer off properly (not just putting it to sleep), waiting 30 seconds, and turning it back on clears temporary memory and often restores normal speed. Building this into a weekly or fortnightly habit — particularly for printers used heavily — is a simple way to keep performance consistent.
Check Ink Levels
Low ink can sometimes cause a printer to slow down as it compensates for inconsistent ink flow — running additional passes or adjusting output to try to maintain quality. If you've noticed a gradual slowdown rather than a sudden one, checking ink levels is worth doing.
Replacing a low cartridge with a genuine replacement from HP, Canon, Epson, or Brother and running a test print is a quick check. And when the old cartridge is done, don't bin it — every HP and Canon order from Crazy Kangaroo includes a free prepaid recycling envelope, or you can download a free Freepost recycling label at any time.
