For more than three decades, printing has been an essential, but often fragmented, part of how people work. In every industry, across every type of business, printing is woven into daily workflows: reports sent to office printers, shipping labels generated on shop floors, contracts finalized for signature, and countless documents for routine tasks in between. Yet the underlying print experience has historically been complicated by one persistent challenge: every device required its own driver.
That model, built for a very different era of computing, has created friction for businesses and consumers alike. Device-specific drivers increase IT overhead, introduce reliability gaps, and create security risks, particularly as Windows has evolved and diversified across architectures and devices. For commercial environments relying on print management software, the complexity compounded: hardware vendors built drivers tuned to specific chips, while software vendors built their own layers on top.
Today, Microsoft is replacing that long-standing complexity with a fundamentally modern approach.
A universal print foundation for every Windows device
The modern print platform represents a major shift in how printing works on Windows. Instead of requiring device-specific drivers, Windows now ships with a single, universal, inbox-class driver based on the industry standard IPP protocol and Mopria certification. This model, sometimes described as “driverless” (although a universal driver still exists under the hood), enables Windows to connect seamlessly to a broad range of printers without requiring customers to download anything.
More importantly, this architecture is processor agnostic. Whether a customer is using a traditional x64 PC or the latest Copilot+ PC running on Arm-based silicon, the print experience is the same: plug in (or connect over the network) and print.
Enabling differentiated experiences through print support apps
While the universal driver standardizes core functionality, manufacturers still need ways to differentiate their products. To enable that, we created the Print Support App (PSA) Framework, an API that our print partners can use to develop lightweight, Microsoft Store-delivered applications (PSAs) that unlock brand-specific features, advanced print settings, and richer UI experiences. Many companies, including HP, Brother, Canon, Xerox, Ricoh, and others, have already shipped PSAs, and more continue to onboard them. For users, nothing extra is required: Windows automatically acquires the PSA when a supported printer is connected. PSAs also work across architectures, giving manufacturers one way to support all Windows customers without maintaining parallel driver stacks.
Stronger security by design
Moving away from legacy third-party driver models also improves Windows’ security posture. Traditional drivers operated with broad system privileges and represented a persistent vector for vulnerabilities. By consolidating print functionality into a standardized, hardened platform and reducing reliance on custom drivers, we shrink the surface area available to attackers. As previously announced, we’re taking additional steps to deprecate and restrict new third-party driver submissions, accelerating the ecosystem’s move toward safer, modern alternatives.
A better experience for IT professionals and organizations
The modern print platform simplifies deployment, reduces troubleshooting overhead, and ensures consistent experiences across hardware refresh cycles. For print management developers and silicon partners, it eliminates the need to rebuild their software to support new Windows platforms or editions. And for organizations adopting new Windows devices, especially Arm-powered ones, it removes longstanding compatibility blockers.
This ecosystem shift is already well underway. Modernizing an industry as broad and diverse as Windows print is a large undertaking, but the progress is real and the momentum is accelerating. At Microsoft, our goal is simple: make printing on Windows effortless, secure, and reliable for everyone. With the modern print platform, we’re building a future where the print experience just works, no matter the device, no matter the architecture, and no matter how complex the environment behind it.
To learn more about new, modern, and secure print experiences from Windows, refer to our documentation.
Continue the conversation. Find best practices. Bookmark the Windows Tech Community, then follow us @MSWindowsITPro on X and on LinkedIn. Looking for support? Visit Windows on Microsoft Q&A.
Microsoft