Say you want to use some printers via IPP, but these require authentication with a user account. You could use this hint which was published a few days ago, and install the printer directly using an address like this: You could also do this in Tiger by holding the Option key while pressing Add. However, there are two fundamental problems with this approach. First, these printers can be used by every user on the machine, so adding printers like this only makes sense on single-user machines. Second, the account data is written to /etc/cups/printers.conf, i.e. this file contains your password in clear text (this file is only readable by administrators, though).

• Printer Authentication

The machine name that normally appears in the 'Printer' menu is SCxxxxxx. ('xxxxxx' is a sequence of characters that varies depending on the machine model.) When black and white printing is set in the printer driver, printing is possible without entering user information. For black and white print settings, see 'Black and white printing'. Nov 24, 2016  I am trying to print from macOS Sierra to a shared printer on a Windows machine. I can see the printer on the network, and can even see it is 'idle' but when I print, it says 'Hold for authentication' If I press the refresh in the queue, it asks for my username & password on the Windows system, which I enter. And then I upgraded to High Sierra and now I can't print because of the 'Hold for Authentication' message. I searched for a solution many times but nothing I've found has worked thus far. I went into keychain and searched for the printer but it wasn't there.

Fortunately, OS X 10.5 actually supports IPP printing with authentication, but Apple somehow managed to obfuscate this feature. Read on to see how to use it.
Here's how to use IPP printing with authentication:

1. In case you don't already know, there is a bug in Leopard such that you absolutely have to log in with an administrative account to add printers (identification with the lock button is not enough if you work with a non-administrative account). So login as an admin first.
2. Click the plus sign in the Print & Fax System Preferences panel to show the Add Printer dialog. When it appears, choose IP in the toolbar, and then select Internet Printing Protocol - IPP as the protocol. Enter the server address of your CUPS server (don't try to add any account information here), the name of the printer queue, and then add the printer.
3. Now send a print job to the printer, and you will see that, well, it doesn't work, since you didn't have to specify any account information so far.
4. Go back to the Print & Fax pane in System Preferences. Double-click on the printer you just send the print job to. You see now that the printer is inactive and the print job was halted -- due to missing identification.
5. Continue the print job, and suddenly, an identification dialog will pop up. Why didn't it pop up earlier? Why do we have to explicitly continue the print job? Only Apple knows. But finally, you can enter your account information and also save it in your keychain.

You should also take a look into /etc/cups/printers.conf -- there is no password there, but notice the line which reads: Evidently this line does the trick. Therefore, if you're comfortable with editing configuration files directly, adding new printers is a simple copy and paste job. By the way, the same should work with SMB printing.

If you have a USB printer available, then one of the easiest ways to make it a communal printer is to share it on the network. However, there may be times when in attempting to print to such printers, you see your print job spool to the device, but it then sits in your print queue with a small message that states something about the job being on hold with authentication required.

This issue may happen for several reasons, and generally can be fixed with a few quick adjustments:

1. Check your shared printer permissions

On the system that is sharing the printer to the rest of the network, go to the Sharing system preferences and choose the Printer Sharing service. In here, select your shared printer and then check to see what users are allowed to print. By default this should be set to Everyone. If not, then you will be required to supply credentials in order to print to this system from another one. Try adjusting these values, initially by removing any specified users so “Everyone” is the default again, and then adding back any restrictions you wish after you get the printer working.

Check this area for your selected shared printer, to determine if there are any restrictions on printing. Everyone means anyone on your local network can print, and should be able to do so without restriction.

2. Manually refresh the print job

To the right of your print job in the print queue window you should see round gray buttons for stopping the job and refreshing it. Click the one to refresh the job, and hopefully this will spur the networked system to accept any previously stored credentials for connecting to your printer.

3. Remove keychain entries for your printer

Being a network resource, if your printer requires credentials to connect, then when you initially set up your printers, your Mac will have stored the credentials in your keychain. If these entries are faulty in any way, then they may hinder your Mac’s ability to authenticate automatically. Therefore, on the Mac that cannot connect, open the Keychain Access utility and perform a search for your shared printer’s name. Select and remove any entry that shows up in your search. Then try printing again, and you should be prompted to authenticate. Now again give your credentials and optionally choose to store them in your keychain.

Printer Authentication

4. Delete and re-add your printer with a different name

This problem may be with how your Mac is resolving the name and address of the shared printer on the network, so one approach for fixing this may be to remove the printer, and then re-add it. You can do this on the client Mac that is trying to send the print job, and also with the server Mac that is receiving it.

One approach that might be beneficial here is to simply reset the print system, and then add your printers back. This will give you a fresh factory-default printer configuration to use, which will clear out any nuance changes you might have made to the printer setup which may be affecting your ability to authenticate. To do this, in the Print & Scan system preferences, right-click the printer list and then choose the option to reset the print system.