Use Google Cloud Print And Gmail Mobile to Print From Anywhere

After a long wait, it’s here.

Google Cloud print has finally arrived and  you can now print documents, email messages, PDF’s on to go. Yes, from your smartphone and that office printer, wirelessly.

There are so many situations when you may want to print word documents, photos, PDF’s or email messages, while you are not at home  or travelling your way to the office. It would be nice, if you can use an app or something to print on the go.

How Google Cloud Print Works

With your mobile device connected to Google’s cloud connect service, you can print documents from any smartphone or mobile device. This includes Android, iPhone, Symbian; there is no need to rush to your office desk back and forth and print out that important PDF document.

First, you will need to connect your printer with the cloud print service (requires your Google account and the latest version of Google chrome as the browser). Once installed, enable the Google Cloud Print connector in Google Chrome.

When you have successfully connected your printer with Google cloud connect service, open Gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” as shown in the following image:

Apart from printing the text of an email message, you are also allowed to print email attachments e.g Word documents (.doc), PDF attachments by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to each item. Google says that this feature is currently being rolled out in US English and if you are unable to use gmail.com for cloud printing, do check back after a while.

Google Cloud print is independent from the status of your printer. So if your home printer can’t be reached while you submit a new “print job”, your job will wait in the print queue in the cloud. When your printer comes back online, it will connect to Google Cloud connect and complete the print job normally.

Please note that Google cloud print is only available for Windows computers at the moment but Google says that the support for MAC and Linux operating system is expected in a few weeks.

Alternative – Trigger a Print Job Using Dropbox

Veteran blogger Mr Amit Agarwal has earlier written a VBS script which lets you wirelessly print documents, photos, PDF’s from your mobile phone to the home printer. All you need is a printer connected to your computer and a Dropbox account for receiving and triggering the print job.

So, if you want to use a Linux or a MAC computer for transferring automatic print jobs on the go – you can follow the above guide and get the script installed under your “My Dropbox” folder. Watch this following video to learn how the script works (video courtesy – tinkernut on YouTube)

For more information on Google Cloud print, do check out the FAQ here.

Related: How to reduce printing costs of office documents