Printer prints but won’t scan on a Mac
Xerox WorkCentre, Xerox Phaser MFP, Samsung SCX, Samsung Xpress, Dell laser MFPs — same story on all of them: the Mac prints without complaint, but the scanner is nowhere to be found. This is not a glitch on your Mac, and no reinstall will change it. Here is what is actually happening.
What you’re seeing
- Printing works, over Wi-Fi, with no driver installed.
- Image Capture shows no scanner. System Settings → Printers & Scanners has no Scan tab for this device.
- Old driver installers either refuse to run or install and change nothing.
The cause: AirPrint is not scanning
Printing works because these MFPs advertise AirPrint — Apple’s driverless printing protocol. Driverless scanning is a separate protocol, eSCL (AirScan) — and these devices were built before it existed. They simply do not have it, so a modern Mac has no way to see their scanner. That is why the scanner is invisible no matter what you reinstall, reset or reboot.
Older macOS versions bridged the gap with vendor drivers. Those ended years ago:
| Software | Last release | Works up to |
|---|---|---|
| Xerox Mac scan driver (3xxx family) | March 2020 | macOS 12 Monterey |
| HP / Samsung printer driver (V3.93.08) | February 2023 | macOS 13 Ventura era |
| Samsung Scan Assistant / Easy Printer Manager | 32-bit | cannot run on any modern macOS |
On macOS 14 and later there is no official way to scan from these devices at all.
What won’t fix it
- Reinstalling old drivers. They target macOS versions that no longer exist on your machine.
- “Driver download” sites. They repackage the same dead installers, from domains nobody controls. Skip them.
- NAPS2. A fine free app — but on a Mac it can only use scanners macOS already sees (eSCL or TWAIN). It cannot drive these devices.
- Resetting the printing system. Rebuilds the print queue; scanning was never there to restore.
What works
Scan 3025 — free. These printers do have a network scanning protocol — their own, the one the old Windows/Samsung software used. Scan 3025 speaks it directly and carries the open-source SANE driver inside the app: nothing to install, the printer is discovered on your Wi-Fi automatically, pages save to a single PDF. Notarized by Apple, open source (MIT), macOS 14+, Apple Silicon. Network (Wi-Fi/Ethernet) models only — check your model.
VueScan — paid. A commercial app ($60+) that bundles drivers for thousands of scanners, including many of these. A reasonable choice if you also have other legacy scanners.
SANE via Homebrew — for tinkerers. The same open-source driver Scan 3025 uses can be set up by hand with sane-backends and scanimage. The GitHub repo documents how, plus the protocol patch that makes it 10× faster.