Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command

Posted on May 26, 2008 by Chris

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:

Launch Terminal
Type cancel -a -
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.

36 thoughts on “Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command”

Greg F. on July 28, 2008 at 9:44 pm said:

awesome!!! Thanks!

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Rob on September 21, 2008 at 11:45 am said:

Thank you.

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Etienne Bley on September 23, 2008 at 8:24 pm said:

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

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Dallas on November 14, 2008 at 11:36 am said:

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

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Pierlucio Pellissier on December 1, 2008 at 7:18 pm said:

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

Thanks again

Pierlucio

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Eric Magnuson on February 1, 2009 at 7:36 pm said:

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!

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Ufuk C. on March 21, 2009 at 10:40 am said:

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.

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Torley on March 24, 2009 at 8:51 am said:

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.

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France on June 4, 2009 at 11:05 am said:

Great hint! Thanks

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Ty on July 16, 2009 at 10:46 am said:

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

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racemase on July 20, 2009 at 2:38 pm said:

Thanks!!!

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snowgurl on August 12, 2009 at 12:51 pm said:

Wow. That was easy. Thanks!!

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Norton on December 14, 2009 at 2:27 am said:

Thanks for the tip. Glad Google found you!

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yes on December 17, 2009 at 3:20 am said:

awesome!

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

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Edo on December 21, 2009 at 1:54 pm said:

Awesome, thanks!

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Martin on January 26, 2010 at 2:40 pm said:

Thanks!

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Bang on March 9, 2010 at 2:59 pm said:

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.

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Mateusz on April 6, 2010 at 4:05 am said:

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!

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Major on April 27, 2010 at 1:49 pm said:

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

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Punkske on May 15, 2010 at 5:29 am said:

Worked like a charm, Thx heaps

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Sumarou on November 13, 2010 at 1:09 pm said:

Yes it worked! Thanks a lot!

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MattyTomTom on November 19, 2010 at 7:09 am said:

You beauty! Worked a treat.

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Jim on January 9, 2011 at 12:40 pm said:

Thanks! “cancel -a -” just took care of a job that wouldn’t stop requeuing itself on my Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.6) system!

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cyruz on March 30, 2011 at 3:22 am said:

Weird command but it did the job, thanks a lot.

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E on April 5, 2011 at 4:00 pm said:

Hey! Great! Not really… for someone who is just being introduced to these machines. Yes, we still exist; people who don’t need computers for everything they do.
I have no idea what you mean by “Launch Terminal”. Please remember us folks that don’t know where anything is yet… no we’re not stupid; MOST professions operated without computers a very short time ago, including doctors and lawyers and other supposed positions of intelligence.

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- Ruairi on April 13, 2011 at 9:45 am said:
  
  To E
  
  Go to finder
  go to Applications folder
  Scroll down to utilities folder
  enter it
  go to terminal
  double click
  wait for prompt
  Type cancel -a-
  Job done!
  
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Ruairi on April 13, 2011 at 9:46 am said:

To original poster.

Thank you very much. Had an image stuck on hold for a long time.
How in God’s name did you find this solution?

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Chris on April 13, 2011 at 10:41 am said:

If I recall correctly, I did some searches online and somehow stumbled across the right keywords to pull up this solution. I don’t remember what site it was, but whoever it was, thank you!

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Ed on April 13, 2011 at 8:57 pm said:

3 years after the original post and it worked like a charm. Thank you!

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Mike on April 24, 2011 at 1:17 pm said:

Thanks for the great tip!

I finally found the “cancel -a” reference.
http://www.unix.com/man-page/OSX/1/cancel/

Cheers – Mike

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TedO on June 6, 2011 at 5:18 pm said:

My brother’s Macbook pro was taking almost a full minute to go to sleep. I had read that someone had found that jobs in the print queue were causing this. I ran this for him and it took care of the problem.

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Daniel Hollerung on June 17, 2011 at 10:10 pm said:

Single best Terminal tip ever! Hats off to Chris and his life-saving insight. I searched for what seemed like an eternity and this was more helpful then I could ever imagined.

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madadmin on June 28, 2011 at 5:36 pm said:

fantastic, works on snow leopard server to
had some jobs stuck in the print server
cancel -a – ….bam gone
thanks very much

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jody on September 22, 2011 at 10:31 pm said:

Thanks a million
, it’s so easy

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Chris Gonyea

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Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command

36 thoughts on “Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command”

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