OpenPrinting

A self-hosted cloud print console. Submit jobs from anywhere, have them picked up and printed by a lightweight Windows service running on the machine with the printers.

---

The problem

Most workplaces have printers that are physically tied to a network. If you're not on that network — or you want someone else to be able to print without giving them direct access to the machine — you're stuck. You end up emailing files, using shared drives, remoting into machines, or asking someone to physically print things for you.

OpenPrinting solves this by putting a job queue in the middle. You submit a file (or a URL) through a web console, it lands in the queue for a specific printer, and a small Windows service running on the print machine picks it up and sends it to the printer. Nothing needs to be on the same network. No VPN required.

Who is it for

• Small businesses and offices that want to let staff print remotely without setting up a print server or VPN
• Warehouses and logistics operations that need to push ZPL label jobs to thermal printers from a central system
• IT admins who want a simple, auditable way to manage print queues across multiple machines without enterprise print server software
• Developers building products that need printing — invoices, receipts, labels, reports — without building and maintaining their own print infrastructure. Submit jobs via the API and let OpenPrinting handle delivery to whatever printers your customers have
• Developers and homelabbers who want a self-hosted alternative to cloud print services like Google Cloud Print (discontinued) or PrinterLogic

How it works

Browser / API client
      │
      ▼
  console-api          ← ASP.NET Core API, SQLite
  console-client       ← React frontend, served via nginx
  RabbitMQ             ← job queue, managed internally (all run in Docker)
      │
      │  HTTP polling (GET /jobs/next)
      ▼
  printing-service     ← Windows Worker Service, runs on the print machine
      │
      ▼
  Windows print spooler / raw port

1. You log in to the web console and submit a print job — either by uploading a file or providing a URL
2. The API saves the job to the database and enqueues it in RabbitMQ (one durable queue per printer, managed entirely server-side)
3. The printing service polls GET /jobs/next every 5 seconds — the API dequeues the next job and returns it
4. The printing service prints the file and calls back to mark it complete or failed

Multiple machines can each run their own printing service, and each registers its own printers. Jobs are scoped to your account — you only see your own printers and queue.

Supported formats

Format	How it prints
PDF	Rendered via embedded PDFium — no Acrobat required
Images (JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF)	Scaled to fit the page via Windows GDI
Plain text	Printed with Courier New via the Windows print spooler
ZPL	Sent raw to the printer — for Zebra and compatible label printers

Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) are not supported directly — export to PDF first.

---

Setup

Requirements

• Docker + Compose (for the server)
• A Windows machine with printers attached (for the printing service)
• .NET 7 runtime on that Windows machine

1. Configure and start the server

cp .env.example .env

Open .env and fill in the values:

Variable	Required	Description
JWT_SECRET	Yes	At least 32 random characters. Run openssl rand -base64 32 to generate one
PUBLIC_URL	No	The URL the console is accessible from. Defaults to http://localhost
ALLOW_LOCAL_LOGIN	No	Set to true to enable email/password login
OAUTH_CLIENT_ID	For SSO	Client ID from your identity provider
OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET	For SSO	Client secret
OAUTH_AUTHORIZATION_URL	For SSO	Authorization endpoint
OAUTH_TOKEN_URL	For SSO	Token endpoint
OAUTH_USERINFO_URL	For SSO	Userinfo endpoint
RABBITMQ_USER	No	RabbitMQ username. Defaults to openprinting
RABBITMQ_PASS	No	RabbitMQ password. Defaults to openprinting — change in production

Any OIDC-compatible provider works — Keycloak, Authentik, Auth0, Google, Azure AD, etc.

docker compose up -d

The console will be at http://localhost (or whatever PUBLIC_URL is set to). On first visit, you'll be prompted to create an admin account.

Bring your own queue

RabbitMQ is bundled and managed automatically — you don't need to configure anything. If you want to use your own RabbitMQ instance instead, set these in .env:

RABBITMQ_HOST=your-rabbitmq-host
RABBITMQ_USER=your-user
RABBITMQ_PASS=your-password

The API will connect to your instance instead of the bundled one.

2. Set up the printing service

On the Windows machine that has the printers:

cd printing-service
dotnet run

On first run it opens a browser to log in to the console. Once authenticated the token is saved locally and reused. The service will register itself and its printers, which will then appear in the console.

To point it at your server, edit printing-service/appsettings.json:

{
  "PrintingService": {
    "ServerUrl": "https://your-server"
  },
  "RabbitMq": {
    "Host": "your-server",
    "User": "openprinting",
    "Pass": "your-password"
  }
}

Installing as a Windows service (optional)

To have it start automatically with Windows:

dotnet publish -c Release -o ./publish
sc create OpenPrinting binPath="C:\path\to\publish\printing-service.exe"
sc start OpenPrinting

---

Development

# API — runs on http://localhost:5184
cd console-api
dotnet run

# Frontend — runs on http://localhost:5173, proxies /api to the API
cd console-client
npm install
npm run dev

The database is created and migrated automatically on first run.

---

Repository layout

console-api/        ASP.NET Core 7 Web API
  Controllers/      Auth, agents, jobs
  Models/           PrintJob, PrintingAgent, User
  Migrations/       EF Core migrations (SQLite)
  Services/         JWT, OAuth

console-client/     React + Vite + Tailwind frontend
  src/api/          Typed API clients
  src/pages/        Login, dashboard
  src/components/   Shared UI

printing-service/   .NET 7 Windows Worker Service
  Services/         AgentService, JobService, RawPrinter
  Worker.cs         Polling loop