Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command

Posted on May 26, 2008 by cgonyea

If you need to clear your entire print queue in Mac OS X for whatever reason, there is a simple terminal command you can type to do the job.

Simply:

  1. Launch Terminal
  2. Type cancel -a -
  3. Success!

All print jobs in the print queue should now be gone!

I have only tested this in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I assume it will work in 10.4 Tiger as well.

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20 Responses to Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command

  1. Greg F. says:
    July 28, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    awesome!!! Thanks!

  2. Rob says:
    September 21, 2008 at 11:45 am

    Thank you.

  3. Etienne Bley says:
    September 23, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    It even cleared a queue that would delete jobs – but them magically put them back (jobs started from remote computers). Thanks.

  4. Dallas says:
    November 14, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Very cool. Got rid of a job stuck in “on hold” status that wouldn’t resume or delete.

  5. Pierlucio Pellissier says:
    December 1, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    Great! thanks a lot I had a couple of prints on hold and I couldn’t get rid of them.

    Thanks again

    Pierlucio

  6. Eric Magnuson says:
    February 1, 2009 at 7:36 pm

    Bravo! I’ve had something stuck in my print queue for about 8 months. It wouldn’t delete at all. Luckily, this force delete of the queue did the trick! Thanks!

  7. Ufuk C. says:
    March 21, 2009 at 10:40 am

    What a simple sloution! I’ve tried everything on osx, but it seems like I’d rather take this terminal thing more seriously… Thank you.

  8. Torley says:
    March 24, 2009 at 8:51 am

    I had some jobs that were stuck and this worked! THANKS a lot! I also like how you have an old post reminder beneath this comment form. :)

  9. France says:
    June 4, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Great hint! Thanks

  10. Ty says:
    July 16, 2009 at 10:46 am

    Awesome got rid of my hung job in the que! Will be very useful in ARD in the future.

  11. racemase says:
    July 20, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Thanks!!!

  12. snowgurl says:
    August 12, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    Wow. That was easy. Thanks!!

  13. Norton says:
    December 14, 2009 at 2:27 am

    Thanks for the tip. Glad Google found you!

  14. yes says:
    December 17, 2009 at 3:20 am

    awesome!

    my cpu was running at 99% because of a print job left in the queue. thanks for this

  15. Edo says:
    December 21, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    Awesome, thanks!

  16. Martin says:
    January 26, 2010 at 2:40 pm

    Thanks!

  17. Bang says:
    March 9, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    Works like MAGIC. I spent a month living with Canon printer job stuck in the queve. My MacBook battery life slid down to about 1 hour per charge and the cooling fan was working all the time, making noise like I was next to a highway! :-( I was ready to take the machine to Apple for repair and only accidently thought of a printer queve and a possibility of a bad printer driver causing this. Your solution was “Chris-sent”. ;-) Thank you.

  18. Mateusz says:
    April 6, 2010 at 4:05 am

    Thanks! My mac (mbp, snow leopard) took 30 seconds to go to sleep because of a stuck printer job. I’ve just typed “cancel -a-” in the terminal and the problem was solved. Nice!

  19. Major says:
    April 27, 2010 at 1:49 pm

    Print Jobs still stuck after running cancel -a-. Also tried cancel -a, cancel -a -. No luck. Am I missing something?

  20. Punkske says:
    May 15, 2010 at 5:29 am

    Worked like a charm, Thx heaps ;-)