Can you add Airprint to an existing Brother Printer that doesn’t already support it?
I have an existing Brother MFC9330 printer that doesn't support airprint. It does support wireless printing as it has a wifi card. That has always worked very well. But it doesn't support printing from my iPad or iPhone.
Are there any existing Brother add-ons or 3rd party devices to add airprint to a printer?
Answers ( 1 )
After a good bit of research and help from a friend, I found a couple of different ways to address this. It seems that most printer manufacturers, Brother included, have their own utilities to provide Airprint-like functionality to their devices.
They approach the problem in different ways, so YMMV. For Brother, they have an app called "iprint and scan" that you can download from Brother's website. You can also get the mobile version here.
This app will allow you to print from your iOS device or Android device to your compatible wireless, wired, or even, USB connected printer. Note that you will need your computer to be online and connected to the same network to get this to work.
All that said, the Brother apps are pretty atrocious and there are several other 3rd party apps that most would recommend over the vendor utilities. The vendors create these utilities as an afterthought while 3rd parties typically put some sweat equity in there.
Here are the two best ones I've found:
1. Printopia (my personal favorite) - This app has a very easy, no frills install, and just works. I downloaded it, double-clicked the setup file, installed it, and selected the 7-day free trial. After a quick Google search to figure out where the actual print option is in Google Docs, I was able to test printing to it with no issues. For Microsoft apps in iOS, it's a lot more intuitive and easily found. This worked as well.
2. Presto - If you're looking for a solution that supports Windows PCs, then this is probably your best bet. I didn't try it out myself, but I'm guessing it has similar behavior to Printopia.
Happy printing!