Enable Native Google Cloud Printing and Printer Sharing in Windows

How to Enable Native Google Cloud Printing and Printer Sharing in Windows

We’ve shown you how to enabled Cloud Print on your mobile devices and even use third-party tools to add it to Windows. Read on as we show you how to add Cloud Print functionality as a Windows service and native printing from any of your Windows computers.

Why Do I Want to Do This?

Cloud Print is a fantastic way to print from any internet-connected location to any Cloud-enabled printer; it completely breaks the paradigm of forcing you to transfer a file to a computer on the network directly attached to the printer.

In addition to all the benefits you get from Cloud Printing (which we delve deeper into here), thanks to the new releases from Google you now have two awesome ways to access Cloud Print.

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First, Google Cloud Print Driver adds in print-anywhere functionality to Windows without 1) having to print from Chrome or  2) relying on a third party helper app. Because the new Cloud Print Driver integrates Cloud Print right into Windows like a regular native printer, any application that can access the system printers can access your Cloud Print printers.

Second, Google Cloud Print Service links all your existing printers directly to Google Cloud Print. Instead of the relying on a Chrome extension to serve as a print server, you can integrate your printers and Cloud Print at the service level.

What Do I Need?

For this tutorial, you’ll need a few things:

• A Google Account
• A Windows Computer
• A Copy of Google Chrome
• A copy of the Google Cloud Print Service (if you want to link your existing printers to your Cloud Print network)
• A copy of the Google Cloud Print Driver (if you want to add Google Cloud Print to your list of default Windows printers)

Now, to avoid any frustration, let’s make that distinction very clear: If you want to integrate your existing printers into your Google Cloud Print account, you install the Service (which we’ll cover in the first portion of the tutorial), but if you want to install Google Cloud Printer as a printer on your computer (so you can print to your existing Cloud Print printers) you need to install the Driver. Service to link printers to the cloud; Driver to add Google Cloud Print to your default printer list.

Installing Google Cloud Print Service

Although setting up Google Cloud Print Service isn’t a huge pain, it’s pretty non-intuitive for a Google product. In order to install the Print Service, you need to first visit the Google Cloud Print Service download page here. Even though it will refuse to let you download the application if you’re not using Chrome, you can actually download it directly with any browser. The catch comes later, when the installation app actually calls on Google Chrome (now, whether it actually needs any of the Chrome components to function or Google just wants you to use their browser, is unclear).

Once you’ve downloaded the initial installation application by clicking “Accept and Install”, you’ll be prompted by the Windows UAC to authorize the installation. Confirm the installation and let it finish installing.

Here’s the part of the installation process where it gets a tad non-intuitive. It looks like you’re done, but all we just did was install the Print Service; we didn’t actually link it to your Google Cloud Account. In order to do so, we need to actually launch the service. Click on the Start Menu and look for the freshly installed Google Cloud Print Service:

When you launch the application, you’ll be greeted with a simple interface like so:

The password you enter here is the user password for your Windows account, not your Google password. Again, with emphasis, enter your local Windows username and password. Enter your password and click “Register”. This is the point in the installation where the installer kicks you over to Google Chrome and prompts you to authorize your Google Account. Go ahead and do so:

Now, those of you who have already played around with Google Print and used the Google-Chrome-as-Printer-Server work around might pause here and say “Wait a minute, what if I’m installing this feature on a computer that already has direct access to some of the printers in my Google Print account? Won’t this make duplicates?” Yes, yes it will. Fortunately you can just bulk delete the duplicate entries in your Cloud Print control panel. It’s an annoyance, but it takes about 10 seconds to fix.

At this point, you’ve successfully linked your local printers to the Google Cloud Print network. As long as this Windows machine stays on to function as a print server, you’ll have access to the printers.

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Installing Google Cloud Print Driver

In the previous section, we covered how to link your Windows printers to Google Cloud Print. This section covers the installation of the Print Driver which links Cloud Printers to Windows via the addition of a “Google Cloud Printer” in the native printer list.

Fortunately, the process of adding Google Cloud Printer to your computer (as opposed to adding to Cloud Printer via the Cloud Print Service) is a snap and quite intuitive. All you need to do is to visit the Cloud Print Driver page, accept the EULA, and download the installation app. Run the app, authorize the installation, and Google Cloud Printer will appear immediately in your list of native printers as seen in the screenshots above and below.

Now, unlike the Cloud Print Service that calls on Chrome during the installation process and then finishes installing itself as a full Windows service, the Google Cloud Printer continues to rely on Google Chrome. When you actually print to the Google Cloud Printer, it will pop up a little Chrome window which will either prompt you to login to your Google Account or display a list of the Cloud Print printers accessible to the currently logged in Google Account like so:

Once you select the printer you want, you’ll be offered additional print options (partially displayed below):

Hit print, and by the magic of Google Cloud Print your document is shuttled from your Windows PC to the Cloud Printer you’ve selected.

How to Enable Native Google Cloud Printing and Printer Sharing in Windows

SharING DAta & Files Between Android & PC

How to Share Data and Files Between Your Android Phone and PC

Android doesn’t have an iTunes-like desktop program, so the process of syncing your data may not be as obvious as it is with an iPhone.  However, you don’t need a desktop syncing app — even iPhone users are leaving iTunes behind.

While you can move files back and forth with a USB cable or wireless network connection, the ideal way to keep data in sync between your devices is by relying on online services that do the work for you.

Transfer Files Manually to Your Phone

If you do want to transfer files the old-fashioned way, you can copy files directly to your Android device. This is ideal if you want to copy music, videos, or other media files to your Android phone or tablet. After copying the files over, they should be automatically appear in your Android media player app. You can also use a file manager app to view them.

• USB Cables: Connect your Android phone directly to your computer using the USB cable you use to charge it. It will appear as a new drive in the Computer window, where you can copy files back and forth like you would from a USB flash drive. Older Android devices may require you to pull down the notification bar on your phone and tap the Turn on USB storage option to make the Android’s storage accessible on the PC after plugging it in.

• Wireless File Transfers: If you want to transfer files wirelessly, you have a wide variety of options. AirDroid is one of the most convenient. Install the AirDroid app and you’ll be able to access your phone from a web browser, giving you the ability to copy files back and forth. You can also set up Windows networking or create an FTP server to allow your phone to access your PC’s storage.

• Cloud Storage: Copying files the old-fashioned way is best if they are very large — for example, if you want to copy a video file to your Android phone. However, transferring small files and keeping files in sync is easier if you use cloud storage. Whether you use Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, or another cloud storage service, you can drop the file into the cloud storage folder on your computer and open the associated app on your phone. This will give you access to the file without having to transfer it to your phone manually or take up any of your phone’s internal storage.

There are third-party syncing apps that try to replicate that iTunes experience with an Android phone, but you don’t need them.

Sync Your Browser Data

Want all your browser bookmarks, open tabs, history settings, and other data to follow you between your phone and computer? Just enable the sync option in your web browser, install the appropriate browser on your Android phone, and activate the sync option there, too.

• Google Chrome: Log into Chrome on your PC with your Google account and use the Google Chrome browser on Android.
• Mozilla Firefox: Enable Firefox Sync on your PC and use Firefox for Android.
• Opera: If you’re an Opera user, you can enable Opera Link and use Opera for Android.

Users of Internet Explorer or Safari don’t have an official syncing solution. There are unofficial sync apps available, but we haven’t tested them.

Get Music On Your Phone

You could connect a USB cable and copy all your music files to your phone, but that won’t be ideal if you have too much music to fit on your phone. Instead, try using Google Music Manager, which will upload a copy of your music files to Google’s servers for free. You can then use Google’s Play Music app on your phone to listen to your entire music collection if you have an Internet connection, or to cache music on your device to make it accessible offline.

You may also want to try using a third-party music apps, instead. Read more about ways to get music on your Android without iTunes here.

Use Online Services

In the old days, people synchronized their palm pilots and old smartphones with their computers to keep their contacts, calendar events, and other data in sync between their PC and their handheld device. This isn’t the way things are done anymore — in fact, you would have trouble finding a software solution that let you sync your data in this way.

Instead, data is synced by relying on online (“cloud”) services, and Android does this by default. Your Android’s contacts and calendar events are automatically synchronized with Gmail’s Contacts and Google Calendar, where you can access them from a web browser by logging in with the same Google account. Any changes you make to the Contacts or Calendar from your browser will replicate themselves on your phone.

Instead of worrying about synchronizing data back and forth, look for services that have solid Android apps and useful websites or desktop apps and use them to keep your data in sync across your devices. For example, it’s much easier to use the popular Evernote (or another note-taking app, such as Google’s own Google Keep) to keep your notes in sync across your devices than it is to take text notes on your Android and copy them back and forth using a USB connection.

Assuming you use the same services on your PC and your phone, keeping their data in sync should be a snap. This part should happen automatically.

How to Share Data and Files Between Your Android Phone and PC

Google Cloud Print

I cannot recommend Google Cloud Print highly enough.  The only requirement is a Google account and Google Chrome on the computer connected to a printer to which you want to print.

How (and Why) to Get Started with Google Cloud Print

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could print from any of your devices (desktops, laptops, phones, tablets) to any of your printers, at any time? Read on as we explore Google Cloud Print, a fantastic way to enable printing on all your devices big and small.

Why Do I Want to Do This?

The best workflow and computer tweaks make your life easier, and that’s certainly true of setting up Google Cloud Print. Once you have learned about the system and configured it, you’ll be able to print to all your devices without a bunch of annoying go-between steps.

In other words, there will be no more “OK, I looking at this file on my Android phone, so I’ll save it to my phone, copy it to my Dropbox account, go over to the computer and get it from Dropbox, and then send it to my home printer.” There will be only “OK, I’ll print this.” and the Cloud Print system will delivery it right from your phone (wherever you are in the world) to the printer you’ve selected.

Easy printing from a desktop computer has long been a cinch; Google Cloud Print brings that same ease of one-click printing to everything else in your stable of electronic gadgets.

What Do I Need?

To use Google Cloud Print you need three primary things:

• A Google Account.
• A Cloud Print-enabled printer or computer capable of running Chrome connected to the printer.
• A device capable of printing to Cloud Print (e.g. an Android phone, iOS device, laptop, or tablet).

The glue that binds everything together is your Google Account and the Cloud Print servers. What is bound together depends on your personal setup. If you have a newer Cloud Print-enabled printer (check the list here) you won’t need a computer to act as a print server.

If you don’t have a Cloud Print-enabled printer, you’ll need a computer that is on and connected to your printer during the times you want to print (if you have an always on home-server, now would be an idea time to configure it to print to your home printer so you can use it instead of your desktop).

The final component is the device you wish to configure to print to your Cloud Printer. This device (or devices) will most likely be mobile because, after all, your permanently located devices like home office computers and such are likely already configured to print to your home computer via traditional methods.

How Do I Configure My Printers?

The first order of business is getting the actual physical printer online and part of your Cloud Print network.

If you have a Cloud Print-enabled printer, the best way to configure it is to refer to the manual–look for a Getting Started with Cloud Print section or the like. Setup should be as simple as plugging in a few items in the configuration panel of your printer.

If you don’t have a Cloud Print-enabled printer, there are a few extra (although trivial) steps to complete. In order to complete them, you will need to be on a computer that is 1) on when you want to print 2) has Google Chrome installed and 3) can print to the printer you wish to print to remotely.

Note: Before we proceed, we highly recommend going into the Devices and Printers menu on your machine and removing any old printers.

We, for example, had several phantom printers installed that were no longer in service in our home office. If you don’t remove them, they’ll end up being listed in your Google Cloud Print account as useless clutter.

First, you need to enable Google Cloud Print in your installation of Google Chrome. This will allow Chrome to act as a print server for the Cloud Print service and send documents to the printers accessible to the computer on which it is enabled.

Click on the Menu button in the upper right hand corner of the Chrome interface and select Settings. Within the Settings menu scroll down to the bottom and click on “Show Advanced Options”. When the advanced options are displayed, scroll down until you see “Google Cloud Print”.

If you are not signed into your Google Account within Chrome, the button will say “Sign in to Google Cloud Print”. If you are already signed in (e.g. you’ve enabled syncing for this installation of Chrome), the button will read “Add printers”. Sign in if necessary and then click “Add printers”; in addition, take a moment to ensure that “Continue running background apps…” under the System section is checked to ensure your Cloud Printer server stays active even when you’re not actively using Chrome.

After you hit “Add printers”, you will be presented with a confirmation screen that indicates you don’t actually have to do this step to use the Cloud Printer service. That’s true, you could use Cloud Printer strictly to print PDF files to your Google Account–that’s an awesome feature, but it’s not our goal today. Our goal is to get physical printouts from our printer.

Go ahead and click the blue “Add printer(s)” button to continue. This step automatically adds all the printers available on your computer to your Google Cloud Print account. It’s important to only do this on one computer that can access your printers–otherwise you’ll end up with a mess of duplicate printers listed in your account.

Once you have added all your printers you can view/manage them by visiting this link:

There are two things worth noting in the screenshot above. First, the “Share” button and second, the “Owned by me” flags beside all the printers we just added into the system. Cloud Print makes it as easy to share printers with people as it is to share documents in Google Docs. Rather than set up some sort of complex networking arrangement, you can simply give your friend’s Google Cloud Print account permission to use your printer. Printers people share with you will appear here but will be flagged “Owned by [Friend's Name Here]“.

How Do I Print to My Cloud Printers?

Now that your printers are Cloud-enabled, we have to attend to the most important business of all: getting documents from your devices to your printers.

If you’re printing from a Google App of any sort, life couldn’t be easier. Whether you’re using the Google Drive app on Android, or Gmail on iOS, or just logged into the web interface for Google Docs from a remote computer, you can print directly from Google Apps into the Google Cloud Printer service. For example, here are some screen shots of me sending my daughter’s chore check list from Google Drive, via my Android phone, to the printer upstairs–no special add on software or tweaks required:

All I had to do was open the document, click the menu in the upper right corner, select “Print”, select the printer, and then review the print options before clicking “Print”. By the time I walked up the stairs to retrieve the printout, it was already sitting in the tray.

When you’re not printing directly from a Google App or an instance of Google Chrome with account syncing turned on, you’ll need a helper application of some sort. There are helper applications available for Android, iOS, Windows, and OS X that extend the print functionality beyond Chrome/Google Apps to any print-capable application on the system (or serve as a sort of mobile print platform where you can open documents from your device and send them to the Cloud Printer).

You can check out the list of apps in the Google Cloud Print Supported Apps section and grab the appropriate app for your system. If you’re curious how these apps work, you can check out our tutorial demonstrating how to use the third party Cloud Print app on Android here. Update: There is now an official Google Cloud Print application for Android.

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Once you’ve completed the simple configuration process, the potential of the Cloud Print system is vast. You can share a printer with a friend or colleague who routinely needs to send you physical documents, you can set up a shared photo printer at your parents’ house so you and your siblings can automatically send photos of the grandchildren, and, at minimum, you’ll never have to dink around with trying to get a file off your mobile device and onto your remote printer again.

How (and Why) to Get Started with Google Cloud Print

Google Simplifies the Search Interface

Google Simplifies the Search Interface

After a few months of testing, Google released a new search interface that removes the left sidebar and replaces it with a much simpler horizontal bar placed below the search box. A similar UI was launched last year for tablets and last month for smartphones, so Google tries to offer a consistent user experience.

While the old features are still available, the advanced search tools are no longer displayed by default. You need to click "search tools" and pick the right option. Google used to display some relevant search tools and the old interface made it easier to find recent results. Now you need 3 clicks to find results from the past 24 hours instead of only one click (sometimes two clicks). Another issue is that it's much easier to accidentally click the ads when you're using the search tools.

"With the new design, there's a bit more breathing room, and more focus on the answers you're looking for, whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph. It's going out to Google.com users in the U.S. to start, and we want to get it to users in other languages and regions as soon as we can," informs Google.

Google Simplifies the Search Interface

Turn on Google two-step authentication

No excuses: It's time to turn on two-step authentication

Using 2-step verification - YouTube

Your Google account holds your e-mail, apps, music, books, documents, cloud storage, credit cards and more. It’s time to protect that stuff with more than a simple password.

If you’ve been watching the wider tech world over the past couple of days, you’ll be familiar with the recent misfortune of Wired writer Mat Honan, who succumbed to a devastating hacking attack that annihilated his iCloud, Twitter and Google accounts and locked down several devices in the process.

In Honan’s case, the attack was enabled by compromised (yet publicly available) personal info, as well as failures by Amazon and Apple customer support, rather than a traditional brute-force attack or contact with malware. But a crucial part of what allowed the attackers to take down not only his Apple accounts and devices, but also his Gmail and Google stuff, was the fact that he wasn’t using Google’s two-step authentication to protect his account.

Stories like these always bring home the importance of basic digital security precautions. And one of the most basic, yet most effective steps you can take to protect your account is turning on two-step.

Read on to find out how and why you should do it.

What is two-step authentication?

Two-step authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring you to enter a six -digit code, generated by Google and sent to your phone, when you sign into your account. That means even if your password is cracked, your account should still be safe. Chances are whoever’s trying to break into your account from afar also doesn’t have your phone in their possession, so they can't get that secondary code.

You can set up six-digit verification codes to be sent via SMS, or if you’re an Android, BlackBerry or iPhone user, there’s an app called Google Authenticator, which you can use to generate a code instantly. These apps work by accessing your Google account on your phone, then scanning a secret barcode on-screen using the phone’s built-in camera.

What about Android devices and certain ap​ps?

Sometimes an app or device that uses your Google account isn’t able to ask you for a verification code, or it isn’t practical or desirable to have it ask for one. The main example here is Android devices. Sign into one with two-step authentication enabled and you’ll need to use an “application-specific password” instead. These are passwords that give a single app or device access to your Google account at any one time. You can get to them by navigating to accounts.google.com and clicking “Security” from the sidebar, then “Authorizing applications and sites.”

Yes. This part is a pain. But it's important to do.

For example, if you’ve got a Galaxy Nexus and a Nexus 7 tablet, you’d create one for the phone and another for the tablet, and you'd only need to enter it once on the device you're using it for. If you need to stop either from being able to access your Google account, for whatever reason, you can simply hit “revoke” next to the name of the device. And as that password is 16 characters long and only usable by one app or device at a time, everything’s kept securely siloed.

Contingencies

Two-step authentication is good, but it isn’t flawless -- what if your phone’s stolen, for instance? To make sure you’re not locked out of your account if the unexpected happens, Google has a few contingencies in place:

• When you first sign up for two-step authentication, you’ll be asked to provide backup phone numbers, which you can use to get hold of a six-digit verification number in the event that your primary phone is indisposed.
• You’ll also be given a set of backup codes, each of which allows you to sign in once. If your main phone is unavailable, and you’re unable to get to any of your backup numbers, this will allow you to sign in once and set things straight.
• Contrary to what you might think, the Google Authenticator app for Android doesn’t require an Internet connection to work. Even in airplane mode, it’ll generate a working verification code.

How two-step could’ve helped Mat Hona​n, and how it might help you

Amazon and Apple’s customer service blunders (combined with iCloud’s lack of two-step security) had already ensured that Mat Honan’s iPad, iPhone and Macbook were toast. However, enabling two-step auth. could’ve saved his Google account, and the Twitter accounts that were associated with it.

Assume you don't have two-step authentication turned on. If you want to try to recover your password (because you're dumb and forgot it), you're given a few options for account recovery. Part of this involves letting you send a recovery email to an alternative email address you've already linked, and this is only partly obfuscated on the recovery page. That’s how the hacker got into Mat Honan’s account -- without two-step, his recovery address of m******n@me.com was easy to guess. From there, it was simply a case of taking advantage of lapses in Amazon and Apple’s customer services security to take over that account, and then have a password reset email sent to that me.com address.

Had two-step authentication been enabled, the hacker would’ve instead seen a message like this when they attempted password recovery -- an instant roadblock in their attempts to hijack Honan’s Google account.

Journalists, especially those dealing in technology, aren’t normal cases when it comes to phone or web account usage, so if you're not broadcasting your name all over the Internet, you're less likely to fall victim to these kinds of shenanigans.

Nevertheless, it's a simple and easy precaution, and one that everyone with a Google account, and particularly those heavily invested in Google's ecosystem, should take. Depending on how you use Gmail, an attacker gaining control of it could effectively have the master keys to your digital life. What's more, they could gain access to all the purchases and other content associated with your Google account -- if you're a big Android user, that could amount to a significant quantity of stuff. Worse still, if they pulled the plug on your account, you might lose all of this.

So despite the minor, occasional inconvenience, please, please turn on two-step authentication on your Google account.

No excuses: It's time to turn on two-step authentication | Android Central