The Chris Gonyea Project

Thoughts, musings, and junk.

Clear entire print queue in OS X with a Terminal command

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.


4 Comments
  1. Greg F. 7/28/2008, 9:44 pm

    awesome!!! Thanks!

  2. Rob 9/21/2008, 11:45 am

    Thank you.

  3. Etienne Bley 9/23/2008, 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 11/14/2008, 11:36 am

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


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