How To Disable Print Preview In Chrome – 2020 Update

This is how to easily disable print preview in Chrome so that selecting Print opens up the standard Windows system dialog box instead.

Print Preview lets you see the layout of what you’re going to print in advance – while some may find it helpful, I find it annoying. It can also be very slow to preview some web pages.

Unlike some previous methods, this solution still works at the time of writing in March 2019 (Chrome 73).

How Print Preview in Chrome Works

Selecting the Chrome Settings (3 dots) icon then ‘Print’ opens the Print Preview popup which takes up most of the screen. You can also open it with the CTRL + P keyboard shortcut.

There is an option at the bottom left to ‘Print using system dialog…’ – this closes the popup and opens the standard Windows system dialog box, used by other web browsers and most programs for printing.

It is possible to open the standard Windows system dialog box directly, without print preview, using the CTRL + Shift + P keyboard shortcut.

But you’d have to remember to use this keyboard shortcut every time – it’s much easier to just disable Print Preview so that selecting ‘Print’ opens the standard Windows system dialog box immediately.

An example of a standard Windows print system dialog box is shown below:

Chrome system dialog
Standard Windows print system dialog

How To Disable Print Preview In Chrome

Follow these 5 simple steps to disable it and use the Windows print system dialog instead:

  • Make sure Google Chrome is closed
  • Find the program shortcut you use to open Chrome – usually it’s on your desktop or pinned to the taskbar
  • Right click on this shortcut and select ‘Properties’ to open the shortcut’s Properties window
  • In the ‘Shortcut’ tab click in the ‘Target’ box, go to the end of the current entry and add the following command:

 " --disable-print-preview"  NB without the ” ” quote marks and note that there is a single space at the start followed immediately by two hyphens:

disable print preview Chrome
New command in Target of Chrome shortcut

It’s hard to see in the picture so check that the last part of your entry in the Target box now looks like this:

…  \Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-print-preview

  • Press OK to apply the change and close the Properties window

Use this amended shortcut to start Chrome as usual – selecting ‘Print’ will now open the standard Windows dialog box, not Print Preview.

Tip: if it doesn’t work you may have mistyped the command e.g. omitted the space or used a single hyphen instead of two at the beginning – it works in Chrome 73 at the time of writing.

If you ever want to revert back to using Print Preview, follow the same procedure above but, this time, delete the extra command from the end of the Target box.

Using Different Chrome Shortcuts

The text you added is what is called a command line switch – it tells Chrome to use a certain configuration when it starts up.

It is possible to have 2 (or more) versions of the Chrome shortcut – this can be useful if 2 people share the same user account in Windows e.g. you could have one shortcut to open Chrome with print preview enabled, and a second shortcut to open Chrome with it disabled.

If you need to do this, copy and paste the revised ‘no preview’ Chrome shortcut to somewhere else e.g. onto the desktop and, in that version, delete the extra command from the end of the Target box – this shortcut will now open Chrome with Print Preview as standard whilst the original shortcut won’t.

Conclusion

It’s quite easy to disable print preview in Google Chrome – it needs some care when typing the command but does allow the use of different shortcuts if required. Hopefully one day Google will provide a simple menu option to disable print preview.

If you liked this article, why not take a look at how to save ink and paper when printing in Chrome?

15 thoughts on “How To Disable Print Preview In Chrome – 2020 Update”

  1. Thank you for such a well done and clear description of the process. I had found it elsewhere but, not done as clearly as this and I was making the mistake of adding the extra inside the quotes. One little picture that made all the difference was your one showing the end result making things so clear and easy.

    Thank you again.

  2. i want used code javascript will print to browse. but with chrome, i don’t look menu page setup is same in internet expoler. if you know repairt it with javascript or html. please help me. sorry because my english is bad, but i will hope :) thanks & regard

    • i don’t like default print with chrome alway is title, head and footer, my problem is i don’t want display head, footer.

  3. Since there isn’t a lot of coherent information about this topic now that Chrome removed the setting to disable the custom print dialog in v20, I wrote a blog post detailing how to workaround the issue under OS X:

    http://ryan.mcgeary.org/2012/09/13/disable-chrome-print-dialog-use-osx-instead/

    “Fortunately, OS X comes with a relatively simple way to override keyboard shortcuts in specific Applications. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. Once there, select Application Shortcuts and add a new shortcut for Google Chrome.”

    “Make sure the Menu Title reads `Print Using System Dialog…` exactly, and give it the standard print shortcut (`?P`).”

    Enjoy! Happy Printing!

    • Hi Ryan, thanks for the info on disabling it in OS X – should keep Mac guys happy

      I really hate the Chrome Print Preview, looks like a lot of other people do too ;-)

  4. Hi,

    Its not working. I have checked there is only one space in between the chrome.exe and –disable-print-preview. I am using windows 7 64bit. any suggestion? I am searching for its solution since morning and none of the solution is working.

    • Hi, I’ve just retested on a couple of W7 home premium 64 bit computers running chrome (21.0.1180.83) and it works fine on both

      All I can think of is you may be opening Chrome via a Chrome shortcut that is pinned to taskbar/start menu?

      If you have Chrome pinned to the taskbar or start menu, remove it then copy the standard chrome shortcut (from Programs) to desktop then append the code to the Target line – leave a space after chrome.exe then add 2 hyphens disable hyphen print hyphen preview

      That modified shortcut on the desktop should now work – you can right-click on it if you wish to re-pin it again

      If that doesn’t apply to you, there must be something really weird about your Chrome, sorry

  5. Did not work for me. I am running Windows 7 64bit and Chrome version 20.0.1132.57. Chrome printer dialog crashes 70% of the time.

    • Hi Gerry, I can’t explain why the Chrome print dialog crashes for you but if you still see that instead of the standard windows print dialog maybe your target shortcut isn’t correct? Still works in Chrome 20 on W7 64bit on my systems.

      Maybe double check the appended text in the target for number of spaces/hyphens etc?

  6. Excellent tip. The about:flags experimental print preview seems to have disappeared but this works perfectly.

  7. Oh, THANK YOU! This has been a pain in my posterior for five years. First fix I’ve tried that actually worked in Vista HP.

  8. Thanks. But is there any way we can directly print to default printer with default paper without print dialog.

    • I don’t think there is – from the user/Chrome end.

      A specific website might be able to do it via scripting but it would be frowned upon as it’s a backdoor method – imagine a malicious site sending your computer a hidden request to print 1000 pages of rubbish…

Comments are closed.