How to Set the Default Printer on Your Windows 10 Laptop

Digital Literacy For Dummies

Your Windows 10 laptop can print documents to only one printer at a time. You can choose the printer when you print, or, when you don’t specify a printer, Windows uses the default printer.

The default printer isn’t a specific printer, and no manufacturer gives its printer that name. Instead, it’s one of the existing printers available on the network. If a printer is attached directly to your laptop, that printer is the default printer.

The default printer might appear as an icon along with other printers in the various “show me your printers” windows. To set the default printer, follow these steps:

Open the Control Panel.

Right-click the mouse in the lower left corner of the screen to display the supersecret menu. Choose Control Panel from the pop-up menu.
Beneath the heading Hardware and Sound, click the link View Devices and Printers.

You see the Devices and Printers window.

The Devices and Printers window.
Right-click the printer you want to use as the default printer.
Chose the Set As Default Printer command.

That printer is now the new default printer. It sports a green checkmark icon.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.