Another computer question to answer on a third party website where I earn supplemental income answering computer and technology related questions. This one deals with printing wireless from a Macintosh computer. Here is the original initial request quoted verbatim.
I’m not at home but I have my MacBook air and HP Officejet 4650 with me. I can’t remember how to wireless connect the two.
This individual was using a Macintosh with Macintosh operating system 10.12 Sierra installed. You need to connect your printer to a wireless router. You cannot connect your Macintosh computer directly to your printer without a wireless router.
You have to know the Service Set Identifier and accompanying password. Then you would physically go to your printer and connect the printer to the wireless router using the correct Service Set Identifier and accompanying password. If you do not know your Service Set Identifier and password, you can log into your wireless router to obtain and or set these two items.
Many new wireless routers have default Service Set Identifier’s and passwords already configured for you. You could just use those or set your own. Once you have this information you would need to enter this information into your printer.
Most new printers have Liquid Crystal Displays so that you can navigate your printers networking configuration. Another item you need to accomplish is to make certain that your Macintosh, wireless printer, and wireless router are all on the same sub network. For example if your printer’s Internet Protocol address is 10.0.0.2, then you would want your Macintosh to have an Internet Protocol address of 10.0.0.3.
Your Macintosh must be on the same sub network as your wireless printer so that they can communicate with each other. Also, you can give your printer a static Internet Protocol address or use a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol address. A static address never changes hence the term “static”.
Once your printer successfully obtains an Internet Protocol address, then you should be able to print. However, this individual owned a Hewlett Packard OfficeJet 4650 printer and must install some software. If you own this same exact printer and are using Macintosh Sierra 10.12 operating system, then you can download and install the printer software.
Please do NOT connect the printer to your Macintosh computer until the installation program instructs you to. Hewlett Packard printer installs can be quite lengthy, so you might want to become patient. As long as you connected your printer to your wireless router successfully, then the installation program should detect your printer on your local network.
The Hewlett Packard printer installation will then begin installing the printer driver and possibly additional printer software. Hopefully, now you should be able to print and scan. These instructions were written for a Macbook Air with Macintosh Sierra 10.12 operating system printing to a Hewlett Packard 4650 printer.
However, you can certainly use these instructions as a basis point for other Macintosh operating systems, other printer brand and models, and even different operating systems like Microsoft Windows operating system and Linux operating systems. When it comes to wireless printing the first most important task to get your wireless printer connected to your wireless router, which is what this blog post was mostly about.