No printer icon in Ubuntu 14.04 system settings
By Sophia Vance
When I Upgraded from 12.04 I had a problem booting till I changed RO to RW in boot files. But my current problem is that I cannot see a printer icon in system settings, and How do I fix it.
4 Answers
The Printers entry into Unity is provided by file /usr/share/applications/system-config-printer.desktop.
Its content:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Printers
Comment=Configure printers
Exec=system-config-printer
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=printer
StartupNotify=true
NotShowIn=KDE;GNOME;
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=system-config-printer
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Settings;HardwareSettings;X-GNOME-Settings-Panel;X-Unity-Settings-Panel;System;Printing;
X-GNOME-Settings-Panel=printing
X-Unity-Settings-Panel=printing
Keywords=Printer;Queue;Print;Paper;Ink;Toner;
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.22Permissions of the file:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 471 Mar 14 13:19 system-config-printer.desktopAnd when I asked about this file in packages (dpkg -S system-config-printer.desktop) I got as result:
app-install-data: /usr/share/app-install/desktop/system-config-printer-gnome:system-config-printer.desktop
system-config-printer-gnome: /usr/share/applications/system-config-printer.desktopAnd searching by system-config-printer at Synaptic:
So, maybe if you can check if you have the above packages installed, file in place, correct content/permissions, etc.
Even how many weeks after the release of 14.04, there is no update available for this ugly bug.
The solution is to install the printer-indicator for Ubuntu 14.10
Just choose your version and download it here:
and install by:
sudo dpkg -i indicator-printers_0.1.7+14.10.20140527-0ubuntu1*.debLogout/Login and the printer indicator is back like before.
I did all checks suggested by Rael. I found out in the Synaptics that the system-config-printer-gnome was not the same version as the two other file. I marked it up for upgrade and applied the upgrade. Bingo, the printer icon is now in the Settings screen.
In my case it was that I have removed the cups service by accident, you can reinstall it by sudo apt-get install cups and the printer setting icon appear again in the system settings panel, or if you cups service exists, you may try just install sudo apt install system-config-printer-gnome. Good luck!
