If you see options on any of the tabs for printing on both sides of the paper, duplex printing, or two-sided printing, the printer probably supports automatic duplex printing. If your printer supports duplex printing, follow the directions in the printer manual to create duplex copies.

• Manual Double Sided Printing Machines
• Manual Two Sided Printing Mac
• Mac Print Two Sided
• Double Sided Printing Paper
• Mac Printer Settings Double Sided

Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat let you print double-sided if your printer supports that feature. The printer driver controls the options, not Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. Check your printer documentation to see what features your printer supports. (Double-sided printing is also called duplex, back to back, front and back, or two-sided printing.)

(Mac) Print double-sided in Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader DC

Currently, the print settings in macOS take precedence over the print settings in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. When you try to print double-sided in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader, the printer does not print as per the specified settings in Acrobat/Reader. Therefore, you have to configure the print settings using the CUPS admin interface in Mac.

CUPS (formerly known as Common UNIX Printing System) is a network printing service used by Mac computers. It allows you to set up your printers on a network, and customize printer options. By default, the CUPS web interface is disabled on Mac.

Manual Double Sided Printing Machines

Note:

The settings specified in the CUPS interface overrides the print settings in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.

Open the Terminal application on your Mac. To open Terminal, do one of the following:

• Click the Finder icon in your dock. Click Go > Utilities. Open Terminal.
• In the top left menu on your Mac, click the Spotlight icon (), and type Terminal. Open Terminal.

At the prompt, type sudocupsctl WebInterface=yes and press Return

Enter your Mac computer password when prompted and press Return.

Open Safari or any other browser, and type http://localhost:631 in the address bar and press Return. The CUPS web page is displayed.

Go to the Printers tab and select your printer from the list.

In the Administrators drop-down list, choose Set Default Options.

To enable double-sided printing, select Long-edge Binding or Short-Edge Binding for the Two-Sided option. To disable double-sided printing, choose Off.

Your printer is now configured. Open a PDF in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader and print the PDF.

(Mac OS) Print double-sided in Acrobat, Reader 10 or earlier

(Reader X/Acrobat X) Click the Printer button at the bottom of the Print dialog box, and then click Yes when prompted.

Make sure that the Print dialog box is in the expanded mode by clicking the arrow to the right of the Printer pop-up menu.

In the Print dialog box, choose Layout from the pop-up menu.

The Print dialog box with Layout selected from the mode pop-up menu. Long-edge binding is selected from the Two-Sided pop-up menu.

From the Two-Sided pop-up menu, select a binding option.

Click Print, and then click OK from the main Print dialog box.

(Windows) Print double-sided in Acrobat DC, Reader DC

Select Print On Both Sides Of Paper in the printer dialog.

(Windows) Print double-sided in Acrobat, Reader 10 or earlier

Click the Layout tab. This dialog varies printer to printer. It's possible that your dialog doesn't match the dialog boxes shown below.

Make a selection from the Print On Both Sides pane. Depending on the printer driver, this pane can be called 'Double-sided printing' or a similar name. If you don't see a Print on Both Sides pane, then your selected printer doesn’t support duplex printing. Or, the feature is turned off (see Verify that printer features are turned on).

If you do not see a double-sided option, it's possible that feature isn't turned on.

Choose Start > Printers And Faxes (Windows XP) or Start > Devices and Printers (Windows 7).

Right-click your printer and choose Printing Preferences.

Select the desired options and then choose On from the pop-up menu. If you don't find duplex printing and stapling in the options, then your selected printer doesn’t support those features.

Click OK, and then click OK again to exit the dialog box.

If your printer doesn't support double-sided printing, you can manually print your document using both sides of the paper. The steps vary depending on the way the printer feeds and outputs the pages. Print a few test pages following the instructions to understand how to feed the pages back into the printer.

Follow these instructions if the printer outputs the pages in numerical order (starting with page one). The pages exit the printer face down (common with laser printers).

From the Subset pop-up menu In the Print Range area, select Even Pages Only.

Select the Reverse Pages option. In this scenario, the Reverse Pages option ensures that the page sequence is correct.

If the total number of pages is odd, add a blank sheet so the final odd page has a sheet to print on.

Put the stack of printed paper back into the supply (source) paper tray so that the unprinted sides print. Point the top of the pages toward the printer. Make sure that the edges of the paper stack are square.

Choose File > Print and select Odd Pages Only from the Subset menu. (Do not select Reverse Pages this time.)

Follow these instructions if the printer outputs the pages in reverse order (last page first). The pages exit the printer face up (common with inkjet printers).

From the Subset pop-up menu in the Print Range area, select Even Pages Only.

If the total number of pages is odd, add a blank sheet so the final odd page has a sheet to print on.

Put the stack of printed paper back into the supply (source) paper tray so that the unprinted sides print. Point the top of the pages toward the printer. Make sure that the edges of the paper stack are square.

Choose File > Print and select Odd Pages Only from the Subset menu.

Select the Reverse Pages option. In this scenario, the Reverse Pages option ensures that the page sequence is correct.

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Two-sided printing is turned on by default on Mac for supported printers. This means all your print jobs can end up being printed on two-sides, in case you forget to turn off two-sided printing on your Mac.

Disable Two-Sided Printing on Mac

As mentioned above, the default behaviour in macOS is to automatically turn on two-sided printing in case a printer that supports Duplex Mode is connected to a Mac.

However, not every document is suitable for two-sided printing. In-fact, most day to day use documents like school/college essays, homework submissions, resumes, air tickets and many other documents are mostly required to be printed on a single side.

While it is easy to turn off “Two-Sided” option before printing documents, many users forget this and end up having their documents printed on both sides of the paper, which is not what they wanted.

Hence, you are better off disabling two-sided printing on Mac, in order to prevent the possibility of paper, toner and your time being wasted by having to print the documents twice.

In order to disable two-sided printing on Mac, you will have to first enable CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) Browser Interface on Mac. Once you are able to access CUPS, you will be able to make the required changes to disable two-sided printing on your Mac.

Enable CUPS Browser Interface

Manual Two Sided Printing Mac

As mentioned above the print setup on Mac is based on CUPS, an open source modular printing system developed by Apple for Unix based systems. CUPS interface is disabled by default in macOS.

Mac Print Two Sided

Follow the steps below to enable CUPS browser interface on your Mac.

1. Make sure that you are logged into your Admin Account on Mac.

2. Click on the Finder Icon located in the Task-bar of your Mac (See image below).

3. In the Finder Window, first click on Applications in the side-menu and then scroll down and click on the Utilities Folder (See image below)

Double Sided Printing Paper

4. In the Utilities Folder, click on Terminal.app (See image below).

5. In the Terminal Window, Enter the command sudo cupsctl WebInterface=yes and hit the enter key on the keyboard of your Mac

Once this command is successfully executed, you will be able to access CUPS using any browser on your Mac.

Steps to Disable Two-sided Printing on Mac

After enabling CUPS interface on Mac, follow the steps below to access CUPS Settings page and disable two-sided printing on your Mac.

1. Open Safari browser on your Mac.

Mac Printer Settings Double Sided

2. Go to http://localhost:631 – This will take you to CUPS Settings Page.

Note: Although you are accessing the CUPS Settings page via a browser, the page itself is not online. Whatever you are seeing is located right on your computer.

3. When prompted, enter the Username and Password that you normally use to login to your Mac.

4. On the CUPS settings page, click on the Printers tab in the top menu bar (See image below).

5. You will see a list of printers. Click on the Printer for which you want to change the print settings.

6. On the printer’s configuration page. Click on the down-arrow next to “Administration” and then click on Set Default Options in the drop-down menu (See image below).

7. On the next screen, first click on Administration Tab, next click on Printing and then set Duplex Printing Mode to OFF position (See image below).

For some printers the Duplex Printing Mode option is located under General Settings (See image below)

8. Next, Click on the Set Default Options button to save your changes.

Now, close the browser and try to print any document. You will see that two-sided printing option is no longer enabled by default on your Mac.

From now, you will no longer go through those frustrating episodes of having to discard two-sided print jobs and printing them again. Also, you will still be able to print on two sides, in case you want to.