Windows 10 Default Printer Feature

This post was originally published on December 16, 2016
The latest update to this post was made 2 years ago.

Windows 10 Default Printer Feature

Starting with Windows 10, release 1511, there is a new feature called “Let Windows Manage My Default Printer“.  This setting allows Windows to make the last printer you printed to your default from that point on.  This feature is ENABLED by default.

Image : Settings/Devices, Windows 10 v1607
(Click Image For Larger View)

• View this setting under START -> SETTINGS -> DEVICES, scroll down to “Let Windows Manage My Default Printer“.

For those of us in a corporate environment with multiple printers: black and white, color, check printers, etc.  This can be a real issue.  Imagine running a check, Windows sets your default printer to the check printer…  Then you print an email, without even thinking about it and … where does that email print job go?  You guessed it, right on top of a company check!  This is a FAIL!  On domain joined computers, I feel this should be defaulted to DISABLED…  But, I’m not Microsoft…  I do need a solution though, to make Windows 10 release 1511 and higher act like every other version of Windows since the dawning of time…

To fix this “problem” – you can flip a registry setting or on version 1607 and higher there is a group policy setting you can change…  We deployed this setting change via USER group policy registry change to the entire organization and problem solved!

The registry key to modify is:
HKEY_Current_User\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows

Look for a DWORD value called ‘LegacyDefaultPrinterMode‘.
Note: The values are in Decimal in this article.

• If the printer is to be auto-managed by Windows, this setting will be 0  (Default)
• If the printer is to NOT be auto-managed by Windows, this setting will be 1  (Like Other Versions Of Windows)

Image : HKEY_Current_User\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
(Click Image For Larger View)

Starting in Windows 10 release 1607, there is a USER group policy setting that you can control this setting from.  The group policy is located in the USER policy settings under Control Panel/Printers.  Look for the setting called “Turn Off Windows Default Printer Management“.

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Tags: #windows #windows10 #printer #registry #techsupport