Set Default Printer Option Missing in Windows 10

Question

Typically, in Windows 10, you can right-click on a printer and then the context-menu will provide you an option to set that printer as default.

Today, one of my Active Directory users reported printing issues and that she could no longer set a printer as default.

Sure enough, whether I log in as admin or as her, the "set as default printer" option is now missing:

Notice that the option to "set printer as default" is missing from the context-menu in the screen-shot above.

Any advice?

Answer 1

You don't need any utility to do this. As per this Microsoft support page:

To choose a default printer, select the Start button and then Settings . Go to Devices > Printers & scanners > select a printer > Manage. Then select Set as default. If you have "Let Windows manage my default printer" selected, you'll need to deselect it before you can choose a default printer on your own.

Answer 2

Shameless plug - I wrote the following utility. It is open-sourced on Github if you want to check it out yourself.

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You can use my new app, ChangeDefaultPrinter to manually choose a default printer. It does not need to be installed, and can run in a limited user's context or an administrator context.

With Windows 10, Microsoft wants to default to managing your default printer, based on which printer you printed to last while on that network. If you don't want Windows choosing this for you, you can disable it (the app does this automatically if you choose a default printer).

To disable the automatic default, you can use the Registry Editor to edit the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows key. Look for a DWORD called LegacyDefaultPrinterMode. If it's not there, create it. Set the value to 1 to manually choose the default printer (as per previous versions of Windows), or to 0 (or delete it) to enable Windows being able to change the default.

Changes take effect immediately, without the user logging in and out. After this, you should be able to set the default printer.

Answer 3

On my Win10 system, you have to 'Open Queue' first, then from the 'Printer' menu, select "Set as Default Printer".