Gadgetory

if you're still emailing yourself photos and documents just to print them out from your desktop you need air print it's an iOS feature that lets you print directly from your device to your printer without any cables see I can hit print on my iPad and once it connects to the printer what was previously on my screen will be sent to my printer just like that it really is this easy but it does require some setup depending on your printer the setup will vary so the first step is to find out if your printer is natively AirPrint compatible Apple has the complete list of compatible printers on its support site so browse through that list to find out okay if your printer is AirPrint compatible like this epson here the setup is really simple start by connecting your printer to your Wi-Fi network that's almost always done on the printer itself so I'll choose my Wi-Fi network and then I'll enter my password hit done and the printer will do the rest I know it's connected because of this indicator light here and this symbol on the screen here ok that's done now grab your iOS device in this case it's my iPad and connect it to the same Wi-Fi network as your printer so I'll go to settings Wi-Fi and select the same Wi-Fi network you might already be connected to the network but double check just in case as far as the setup that's all done to show you how this works though I'll open up one of my notes pick a note here tap the action button which is where you'll almost always find the print button hit print and as you can see my iPad already found the printer but if it doesn't show up just tap that printer field and select your device from the list all that's left to do is to hit print the tablet and the printer will connect and my no prints almost immediately now that was super easy because this printer is air print ready but what if yours isn't the good news is that you don't have to buy a new one all you need is a program called fingerprint and it works with mac and Windows it is $20 but that is still a lot cheaper than buying a new air print ready printer and there's a free version so you can see how you like it finger print basically makes it so that your iOS device can see your printer as an air print device ok launch the program and in this sidebar you'll see a list of installed printers check the one you want to use with your iOS devices that's it now make sure your computer is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your phone and that your printer is on from here it works just the same as any other air print friendly printer so here's the note I want to print I'll hit the action button hit print my printer shows up in the print dialog so I'll tap print and here comes my note so now that you can print wirelessly from your iOS device you no longer have to go to your desktop to print things out and it makes printing event tickets photos and notes that much easier if you have any questions hit me up on Twitter and check out how to see Netcom for the full written tutorial for CNET I'm Sharon Vaknin