While I love Google Chrome and use it for practically everything I do, printing within the browser can often be challenging, with users encountering freezes or running into errors. It seems with Google Cloud Print’s eventual demise in a few days (December 31, 2020), many individuals are now reporting problems.

Today, I want to discuss some methods one can attempt to fix printing in Google Chrome, focused primarily on printing in Google Drive.

In my own encounter with this issue, I managed to ‘solve’ the problem, yet it took some time to complete. I am still not too satisfied with the results. I managed to simply disable the print preview in Google Chrome by editing the target field in Chrome’s properties, and that ‘fixed’ that part of the problem; however, even with now being able to get to the select a printer part, Chrome would crash when attempting to print.

I ran through several more steps and installed some optional Windows updates, which seemed to fix the problem. I believe the issue (as others online stated) is with Google’s cloud printer, which is getting removed on 12/31/2020 (in a few days).

Now that I can select a printer and successfully print from Google Drive, I wanted to see if I could remove my edit of Chrome’s target file and still be able to print. I could not, so I re-edited the target field to disable the print preview once again.

Below are a few of the steps I took to solve this problem.

· Reset PC

· Reset Chrome Settings

· Remove/Reinstall All Extensions

· Run Chrome Compatibility Scanner

· Run Chrome Harmful Software Scanner

· Edited Target in Chrome Properties to “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –disable-print-preview (this disabled the print preview, but when attempting to print from Drive, Chrome errors out every time I try to switch printers)

· Chrome Print-Preview Fix: 1 – Enter chrome://flags into the address bar > 2 – Disable “enable-cloud-printer-handler” > 3 – Restart the browser > 4

· Apply a few optional Windows updates

· Rinse, Repeat, Tear my hair out

Other possible fixes that I did not try:

· Installing the 32bit version of Chrome (instead of 64bit)

· Click the Windows Button > Click Settings > Click Devices > Select the Printer that is giving you issues > Click the Manage Button > Click Printer Properties > Go to Device Settings Tab > Change “Spooling at Host:” from “Auto” to “Enabled” > Click Apply, then OK. (I believe this is only for non-Windows 10 users)

· Removing/Reinstalling Printers and Printer Drivers

· I found several registry edits but decided against trying them until I exhausted all other options.

While this issue is now solved, I am still looking into finding a better solution (which may just be once the Google Cloud Printer mechanic is removed in a few days and Chrome pushes out an update).

I will update this post once I find a better fix for this rather annoying situation.

I hope it helps!