If you are using Leap and you want to print receipts without clicking through print dialogs, you can setup an instance of the Chrome browser to eliminate the print dialog. It takes a few steps, but eliminating the print pop-up can be a big time saver.

1. In Windows, setup your computer to have the receipt printer as your default printer
2. Create a copy of your Chrome browser shortcut on your desktop
   • Copy / Paste the existing desktop shortcut
3. Rename the new shortcut (left click ONCE, then hit F2) to Leap
4. Open Chrome, using either shortcut, and in the address bar type about:flags . This will open up “Experimental features” of Chrome
5. Search for “Enable new Print Preview UI”, and set it to “Disabled”. You can close the browser.
6. Right-click on the newly created Leap shortcut, then left click on Properties and look for the target line
7. The target line starts with: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
   • Add the following at the end - after the last quotation mark: --kiosk-printing
   • Click OK to save the changes to the Leap Shortcut
8. When you launch Chrome from the Leap Shortcut, the browser will bypass the print dialog box and only print to the default printer.
   • If you need to print to another printer on the computer, launch Chrome using the standard shortcut.
9. In Kiosk printing mode, when all items have been entered for the patron to be checked out, after you hit the “Complete” button the receipt will be sent directly to the receipt printer

Do you know of a similar work-around for Bing browser? The chrome browser doesn’t automatically move the cursor into the barcode field for check-in and you can’t use the return/enter key to acknowledge a pop-up on a Lenovo MIIX on Windows 10.

Did you mean internet explorer or Microsoft Edge? If Edge, is it the older Edge or the newer Edge Chromium version?

Sorry, it’s been a long day. Yes, I meant Microsoft Edge. It’s running version 41.16299.371.0

Thanks,

Susan

I don’t see anything other than ON/OFF for printing control in Edge Legacy Kiosk mode: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/deploy/microsoft-edge-kiosk-mode-deploy

I also didn’t see a group policy for it, but I’ve been away from group policies for so long, I might not be searching in the right place.

We’re installing Edge Chromium to see if that will work. I’ll let you know if I can get it to work.

Susan

New Print UI doesn’t seem to be an option to disable anymore. I know there are other discussions about setting up printing with leap, but I can’t find them. is there a workaround for this issue in place now?

Is there anything helpful in this thread? Using receipt printers with Chrome for Polaris Leap

Probably. I searched a million ways with various combinations of leap and print and that never came up. Thank you.

My issue seems to be that --kiosk-printing doesn’t do anything when I add it per instructions. I’m wondering if the “disable new print UI” is not an option anymore because “new print ui” is the only print ui on the latest versions of Chrome. I will try Edge Chromium and see if there is better luck.

If you’re looking to disable the print preview pop-up, you might check out this article: How to Enable/Disable Google Chrome Print Preview Feature - Make Tech Easier

That article does end with the following:

However, the Windows 10 print preview will appear. Getting rid of that requires Group Policy, which isn’t included in the Home version of Windows 10 and doesn’t always work. There are some more complex workarounds, but it’s easier to simply press Enter on your keyboard to quickly bypass the screen. You used to be able to use --kiosk-printing along with --disable-print-preview , but Chrome disabled this option in the latest versions.

I did read that, but it didn’t click that that was a pop-up and not a dialogue box. I must’ve gotten hung up on terminology. I will try that. - well, not that exactly, but the disable print preview option did come across my radar.

I don’t think we use the --disable-print-preview flag, just --kiosk-printing and that seems to skip the preview window entirely. In fact I think that’s all it does. When you launch Chrome with just the --kiosk-printing, do prints not go immediately to the receipt printer?

Nope. That print dialogue still comes up. Do we need to use the portable version of chrome? I even copied and pasted the flag at the end of the target to make sure I wasn’t messing it up somehow.

• The test box is an old win 8.1 machine instead of 10/11. I don’t know if that makes a difference.

We are using Chrome up here with both the disable print preview and kiosk printing in the shortcut thats made and it still pops up with the print dialogue box. What am i missing?

The entire shortcut that we use is

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c whoami|clip & start "" "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app="https://leap.clcohio.org" --user-data-dir=C:\ProgramData\Leap --kiosk-printing & exit

The first part starts with cmd.exe so that it can copy (via |clip) the output of the native command whoami which outputs the domain\username in the format that Leap needs. This way, when staff open the shortcut, all they need to do is hit CTRL+V and their username fills in. Since our Windows domain name is a bit unusual (nt_wor) and most staff don’t have to know it for any other context, this is very helpful. Totally optional.

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe  /c whoami|clip

Then it starts the actual Chrome application. We do not use a portable version (there isn’t really an official portable version, plus this way we do not need to update two copies of Chrome). Because of the cmd.exe at the beginning, we have to use & start "", but if that feature is not needed, the script can just start with the Chrome path.

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app="https://leap.clcohio.org" --user-data-dir=C:\ProgramData\Leap --kiosk-printing

All of our systems have Chrome installed to the 64-bit path. Installs (but not updates) of Chrome have been in C:\Program Files, rather than C:\Program Files (x86), since June 2020. We had another shortcut to a specific URL in Chrome and had to mass uninstall-reinstall Chrome for any that had an install before June 2020 (Made easy by PDQ Deploy & Inventory).

--app="https://leap.clcohio.org" points us at Leap

--user-data-dir=C:\ProgramData\Leap tells Chrome to use this shared generic path for all Chrome data instead of the user profile. The main benefit of this is for us to configure which printer is used for Leap, regardless of the default printer. The preferences file at C:\ProgramData\Leap\Default\Preferences defines this in what we call printer “chunks”, long strings of printer settings under “recent destinations” within that file. We make that file read-only so that the receipt printers are always preferred over the regular printers. This preferences file also configures Chrome to not prompt to save passwords (the main concern we had with shared Chrome data).

• If your staff stations are already set up with the receipt printers as default, then you can skip this part and let them use the normal AppData location for Chrome data.

--kiosk-printing skips all print dialogs and prints to the first printer in preferences.

Again because of the cmd.exe start, we have to exit the CMD window. Without this, an empty CMD window stays up.

 & exit

Upon install of the shortcut (in C:\Users\Public\Desktop), we create the C:\ProgramData\Leap folder and copy down the Preferences file. The rest of the data in that directory is actually generated when Chrome first launches. We also create a regular desktop shortcut to Leap that opens in a standard browser, which is more useful for staff when they need to print reports that they would actually prefer to come out of the regular printers.

This still brings up a confirmation dialogue for printing. Is it possible kiosk-printing mode has been changed or disabled in more recent versions of chrome? It’s quick enough to just hit enter a second time, but staff don’t seem to like it. Do you know if there’s a way around that or maybe if I’m just botching this one up too. I’m on a tear this week

I would consider running chrome://version/ in the URL bar to check and make sure that it is indeed launching with the --kiosk-printing flags or if there is a problem with the shortcut (extra spaces, missing quotes, etc.) that could be causing the issue. Or if they happen to be launching it in another way; from the start menu for example.

We are using the latest Chrome version - it typically updates itself pretty aggressively which we do not try to prevent, plus we push out updates often to make sure of it. I agree with @wosborn’s take to check via chrome://version if the flag is being set there. Try on your machine just a shortcut to Chrome with only the --kiosk-printing, nothing else, and see if the flag shows up in the chrome://version and if it behaves.

I’m fairly sure the only job of --kiosk-printing is to skip that print preview window. I think it actually renders the window/dialogue and interacts with it, because sometimes we see it come up (for <1 second) and disappear on its own.