Tip: Enable or Disable Print Preview Changes in Google Chrome 120 and Later

Google Chrome 120 and later versions come with new improved print preview mechanism called “Out of Process (OoP) Print Drivers“. By default this improvement is enabled for a few selected Chrome users only. This article will help you in manually enabling or disabling the improvements to print preview functionality in Chrome.

Many users frequently print out web pages and important emails, etc to read them later. Google Chrome allows users to print the pages using main 3-dots menu or by pressing Ctrl+P keys together.

In older versions, the print preview process was executed inside the browser process which caused performance issues to some users. Many users reported frozen or sluggish print preview UI issues to Chrome team.

To overcome these performance issues, Google team has implemented a new mechanism to launch print preview dialog or UI in Chrome 120+ versions. Now all printing interactions from Chrome with the operating system are performed in a separate service process outside the web browser. Chrome team decided to move these interactions out of the browser process to improve browser stability. It also improves the responsiveness of the Print Preview user interface.

The platform printing interactions include check for connected or online printers, get print driver settings and submit files for printing to local printers. Now all these interactions with printer drivers are performed using a separate service process.

Google is rolling out the print preview improvements in phases, that’s why some Chrome users have received the new changes and some are waiting for it.

Now there might be two types of Chrome users:

• One who have received the new print improvements in Chrome but are facing issues due to out of process changes and they want to disable the new functionality.
• Second who haven’t received the new print improvements and want to activate and enable them right now in Chrome.

Fortunately, there is a Chrome policy and hidden secret preference/flag to manually enable or disable the print preview improvements in Chrome web browser.

If you also want to activate or deactivate the print functionality changes in Chrome, following steps will help you:

METHOD 1: Enable or Disable Printing Improvements in Chrome Using Flag

STEP 1. Open Google Chrome web browser and type chrome://flags/ in address bar and press Enter. It’ll open the advanced configuration page.

STEP 2. Now type oop in the “Search flags” box.

Look for following option in the results:

STEP 3. To enable the improvements and changes in print preview functionality, select Enabled from the drop-down box for the above mentioned option.

To disable the improvements and changes in print preview functionality, select Disabled from the drop-down box for the above mentioned option.

STEP 4. Google Chrome will ask you to restart the browser. Click on “Relaunch now” button to restart Google Chrome.

That’s it. After restarting Chrome, the new improvements to print preview functionality will be turned on or off based on the preference value in your device.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore default setting in Chrome, select “Default” option from the drop-down box for the above mentioned option and restart the browser.

METHOD 2: Enable or Disable Printing Improvements in Chrome Using Registry Editor

STEP 1: Press “WIN+R” key combination to launch RUN dialog box then type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

STEP 2: Now go to any of following keys:

If you want to enable or disable the print preview changes for all Windows users:

If you want to enable or disable the print preview changes for current user only:

STEP 3: Under Policies key, create a new key and set its name to Google

STEP 4: Again under Google key, create a new key and set its name to Chrome

So the final key path will be one of following:

STEP 5: Now select Chrome key and in right-side pane, right-click and select “New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value” option. Set the new DWORD name as OopPrintDriversAllowed

STEP 6: To enable the improvements and changes in print preview functionality, double-click on the new DWORD and change its value set to 1

To disable the improvements and changes in print preview functionality, leave the new DWORD value to 0

Now restart Chrome browser and the new improved print preview functionality will be turned on or off based on the DWORD value in your device.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore the default print setting in Chrome, delete the above mentioned DWORD from Registry.

Also Check:

[Tip] Restore Classic Print Preview Dialog Box in Chrome and Microsoft Edge

[Tip] Disable New Print Preview UI in Mozilla Firefox