What This Article Covers
• What the print queue is, and where to find it
• What each job state means, including the difference between Printed and Sent to printer
• How to cancel and retry jobs, individually or in bulk
• How queues behave when you navigate away, run several events, or relaunch the app
• How to find a job's ID for support
• Troubleshooting common print queue issues
Before You Start
There is one print queue per event, and it stays alive for as long as the app is running.
Leaving the event or moving between screens does not cancel queued prints. They keep printing in the background.
Jobs that fail are never silently dropped — they stay in the queue so you can retry them. If a large number pile up, the oldest move to History and can only be reprinted from the gallery.
A queue only ends when you cancel its jobs manually, the app is relaunched, or its event is deleted.
What Is the Print Queue?
The print queue is the single place where every print for an event lives. When a guest prints at the booth, when auto-print fires, when you reprint from the gallery, or when you batch print a set of sessions, the job goes into the same queue.
The queue is what lets you answer the question operators actually ask mid-event: did that print go through, and if not, why? Rather than a print silently vanishing, you can see exactly where every job is, cancel what you don't need, and retry what failed.
Each event has its own queue, and it keeps running whichever screen you're on.
How to Open the Print Queue
Open the Snappic app and start your event
Exit the event by tapping three times in the top left corner (or click the Exit button if visible)
Click Admin
Select Print Queue
This will show the print Queue UI, which shows a list of all printers selected for this event, their status, and the actual print queue.
Job States
Every job starts as Waiting. On a DNP printer over Direct USB it moves Waiting → Printing → Printed. On AirPrint or the Print Server it moves straight from Waiting to Sent to printer — those connections never show Printing. Any job can instead end as Failed or Cancelled.
State | What it means |
Waiting | Waiting its turn. The job is in line for a printer and hasn't started yet. |
Printing | Sent to the printer and printing now. |
Printed | The printer confirmed the print finished. You'll see this on connections that report completion back to Snappic, such as a DNP printer over Direct USB. |
Sent to printer | The job was handed off successfully, but that connection doesn't report back when the print actually finishes. This is normal for AirPrint and the Print Server. It means "sent successfully", not "confirmed printed". |
Failed | The job didn't print. It stays in the queue so you can fix the cause and retry it. |
Cancelled | You cancelled the job before it printed. |
If you're used to a queue that clears itself, note the difference: Snappic never quietly discards a job. A print that can't go through fails visibly and waits for you.
How to Cancel a Job
Cancel a single job:
Find the job in the queue.
Tap the ✕ button on its row.
Cancel everything at once:
Tap Cancel All in the top bar, then confirm.
This cancels every print that hasn't been sent to a printer yet, including failed prints. There's no way to cancel a chosen subset — it's one at a time, or all.
Cancel All is the fastest way to recover from a mistake — a batch print sent to the wrong printer, or a run of prints queued against media you've since changed.
A print already sent to the printer can't be cancelled — it will finish (or fail) on its own. If you tap ✕ to cancel just as a job is being sent, the app tells you it can no longer be cancelled. Cancelling a job doesn't affect the rest of the queue: jobs behind it keep their place and still print.
Cancelled prints can't be retried — cancelling a failed print discards it permanently.
How to Retry a Failed Job
Fix the cause first, then retry — otherwise the job will just fail again.
Check why it failed. The most common causes are a paper jam, an open cover, ribbon or paper running out, or no printer able to handle that template.
Clear the fault on the printer, or adjust your printer setup.
Tap the circular-arrow retry button on the job's row, or tap Retry All in the top bar to retry every failed job at once.
Retry All is what you want after changing media or clearing a jam that took out a run of prints — fix the printer once, retry everything. It's also the right gesture after switching on a printer that was off when the jobs failed. Each failed job shows the time of its last attempt, so a retry that fails again still visibly registers.
Guests don't need to do anything. If a print fails while the guest is still on the share screen, they see a plain-language message with Retry and Cancel — if they tap Cancel, the print is discarded and won't appear here as retryable.
If it fails after the booth has moved on, no message is shown; the job simply waits in this queue for you.
Completed History
Finished jobs move to a completed history list rather than disappearing. Use it to confirm a print went through when a guest comes back asking, or to check how many copies of a session have already printed. Each history row shows the printer, the number of copies, the time the job finished, and its short ID.
How Queues Behave Across Events
This is the part worth understanding properly, because it changes what you can safely do mid-event.
Queues survive navigation. Leave the gallery, switch screens, or leave the event entirely — queued prints keep going. You don't have to sit on one screen waiting for a batch to finish.
Each event has its own queue. Jobs from one event never mix with another's.
Several events can print at the same time. If you're running more than one event on the same iPad, each keeps its own independent queue and they print concurrently.
A queue ends in only three ways: you cancel its jobs manually, the app is relaunched, or the event is deleted.
Print counts are recorded even if you walk away. Jobs still queued when you leave the gallery or the event ends are still counted against the session and event print totals.
Force-quitting or relaunching the Snappic app clears every queue. Anything not yet printed is lost and will need to be printed again.
Printer Status in the Queue
For printers that report their own status — DNP printers over Direct USB — the queue shows a status line under each printer's name: the loaded media and how many prints remain. A coloured dot shows the connection: green means ready, orange means connected but unable to print right now, and grey means not connected. When the printer can't print, the status line shows the printer's own reason instead — like "Cover Open", "Paper End" or "Cooling Print Head".
This means you can usually diagnose a stalled queue without leaving the screen. A queue that looks stuck with a printer showing cooling is working normally and resumes on its own; one stuck on a fault like Cover Open needs you at the printer.
Print Job IDs
Every print job has a short ID shown on its row in the queue, formatted like #A1B2C3D4.
If you contact support about a specific print, quote that ID. It's attached to every internal log line for that job, which turns "a print failed at some point last night" into something we can look straight at after the logs are uploaded.
Troubleshooting
Why is my queue stuck with nothing printing?
Cause: Usually the printer is cooling, or it's in an error state waiting for attention.
Fix: Check the printer's status line in the queue. Cooling is normal under heavy use and resumes on its own. A fault like Cover Open or Paper End means you need to clear a jam, close a cover, or replace ribbon or paper, then retry the affected jobs.
Why does my job say Sent to printer instead of Printed?
Cause: AirPrint and the Print Server don't report back to Snappic when a print physically finishes, so the furthest Snappic can confirm is a successful hand-off.
Fix: Nothing to fix — Sent to printer is a success state. If you want confirmed completion, use Direct USB with a DNP printer.
Why did a job fail instead of printing on my other printer?
Cause: If no printer matches the job's routing rules, the job fails rather than printing on a printer you didn't intend.
Fix: Check the routing restrictions on your printers, loosen the one that should be handling that template, then retry the job.
Why did all my queued prints disappear?
Cause: The app was relaunched, or force-quit and reopened. Queues do not survive an app relaunch.
Fix: Reprint the affected sessions from the gallery. To avoid this, don't force-quit the app while prints are outstanding.
Why did my queue cancel itself?
Cause: The event was deleted while its queue still had jobs in it.
Fix: Deleting an event cancels its queue by design. If this was a mistake, recreate the event before reprinting.
Why did my batch print not add every session I selected?
Cause: Sessions that can't be printed are skipped before they reach the queue — videos, sessions with printing disabled, or templates no printer's routing rules cover. The confirmation toast counts only what was actually queued, and if nothing could be added you'll see a "No Prints Added" alert instead. A batch can also be blocked entirely when the queue is near full or the event's print limit would be exceeded — the alert tells you how many prints can be added right now.
Fix: Check the count in the confirmation toast. If sessions are missing, make sure they're photos with printing enabled and that a printer's routing rules cover their template. Jobs that were queued but couldn't print — printer offline or faulted — appear in the queue as failed and can be retried.
Why do I have fewer prints left than I expected?
Cause: There are two different counts here. The "prints left" number on the printer's status line is the printer's own media counter — it drops for every sheet the printer produces, including prints sent from other stations and from other apps using the same printer. Snappic's print totals, on the other hand, count only what this iPad has recorded — including jobs that were still queued when an operator left the gallery — and don't include prints made on other stations.
Fix: Check the completed history to see what has actually printed. If the event genuinely needs more prints, raise its limit in your dashboard.
Related Articles
Setting Up Direct USB Printing (DNP) — connect an iPad straight to a DNP printer over USB-C.
Routing Templates to Printers — why a job fails instead of printing elsewhere, and how to change it.
Batch Printing from the Gallery — print up to 20 sessions in a single action.
Managing Multiple Printers — run several printers at one event.
How Event Print Limits Work — how Snappic counts prints across every station.
Reprinting with Snappic — reprint a session from the gallery.
Need Help?
Visit the Snappic Help Center or chat directly from your dashboard for live support.