Setting up QZ Tray
Install QZ Tray, point each document at a printer, calibrate the position, and turn off the permission prompt so printing is genuinely silent.
QZ Tray is a free desktop program that lets your browser print straight to the printers on that computer. No cloud, no subscription, and no print dialog once it is set up.
It is also the only engine that works with Auto Print.
1. Install QZ Tray
Download and install QZ Tray on the computer that prints, and leave it running. It sits in your system tray.
QZ Tray talks to the printers attached to the machine it is installed on. It is not a shared service. A second computer that prints needs its own installation.
2. Switch that computer to QZ Tray
- Go to Settings → Print → General.
- Change Print engine to QZ Tray.
The print engine is a per-machine choice, not a store setting. Your office PC can stay on PrintNode while the bench PC uses QZ Tray. You must repeat this step on each computer.
3. Assign printers and calibrate
The printer assignment card groups controls by document — Dispatch, Envelope and Card. Each group has:
- Printer — which printer that document goes to
- Paper size mode — Auto, Exact or Padded
- Horizontal and vertical offset — millimetres, for nudging the content into the right place
- A test page button
Print a test page for each document, measure how far off it is, and enter the correction. The test page has measurement frames and edge labels to make this straightforward.
If your cards and envelopes go to the same physical printer, they share offsets — change one and the other follows, and the page tells you so. That is intentional: the misalignment belongs to the printer, not to the document.
When Auto and Exact both fail
Some printers — particularly consumer photo printers — substitute paper sizes and assume paper is fed a particular way. If both Auto and Exact give you a crooked or clipped print, choose Padded.
Padded declares a larger, ordinary paper size, places your document unrotated and centred on it, and leaves you loading paper exactly as you always did.
There are two further controls for stubborn printers:
- Printer paper orientation — set this to Landscape if your tray only takes that paper sideways.
- Output rotation — None, 90°, 180° or 270°, for when the print comes out turned the wrong way.
A7-size cards on photo-form printers cannot always be made to work, whatever the settings. Use A6 instead, or send that document through PrintNode.
4. Turn off the permission prompt
Out of the box, QZ Tray shows an “Allow” prompt for every print job. Silent printing needs a certificate installed for your shop, which we set up for you at no extra charge on Automate and Enterprise.
Until that is in place, expect a prompt each time.
If an Allow prompt sits open and then times out, the job can still reach paper afterwards. Because of that, a job that might already have printed is parked rather than retried automatically — re-running it would duplicate paper.
Answer the prompt, then use Retry on the parked job if nothing came out.
Settings warns you before the certificate expires. If it lapses, printing does not stop — the Allow prompt simply comes back.
Browsers other than Chrome and Edge
QZ Tray itself works with Firefox and Safari, but the first connection needs a person to approve it, and each browser handles that differently:
- Firefox keeps its own certificate store. QZ must be installed — or reinstalled — after Firefox, with Firefox closed, or the connection fails.
- Safari is subject to macOS’s own local-network permission.
- Chrome shows a local-network permission prompt too.
For Auto Print specifically, use Chrome or Edge. The reasons are covered in that article.
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