Managing Your Printer With a Handy Desktop Shortcut

Managing Your Printer With a Handy Desktop Shortcut

Struggling to navigate menus to manage your print queue or adjust settings? A printer shortcut on your desktop can be a real time-saver. Here’s how to create one with just a few clicks.

This tutorial will show you how to create a shortcut for a printer in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Windows 10

Type CONTROL in the taskbar search and press Enter when you see Control Panel appear.

In the Control Panel, ensure “View by” is set to “Category.

Now click on “Hardware and Sound,” click on “Devices and printers.” Right-click your desired printer and choose “Create shortcut.”

You’ll get a message telling you that you can create a shortcut here… and asking if you want to put the shortcut on your desktop. Click “Yes” to place the shortcut on your desktop.

Now, you can access your printer settings and manage your print jobs directly from your Windows 10 desktop.

Windows 11

Open a run box by holding down the Windows key and tapping the R key. Or right-click the Start button and click “Run”.

In the Run box, copy and paste the following and press OK.

shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}

Right-click on the printer you want to create a shortcut for and choose “Create shortcut” from the menu that appears.

You’ll get a message that you cannot create a shortcut there and asking if you want to place the shortcut on the desktop – click “Yes”.

That’s it. Now you can access your printer settings and manage your print jobs directly from your Windows 11 desktop.