Nine times out of ten, a Canon printer that won't print is failing for one of two unglamorous reasons: a stuck print queue, or a dropped wireless connection. Here's the full list in order of how often each turns out to be it.
A single failed print job — often sent while the printer was off, out of paper, or briefly disconnected — can block everything sent after it, so nothing appears to print even though your computer thinks the job went through. Open your printer queue (Windows: Settings → Printers & scanners → your printer → open queue; Mac: System Settings → Printers & Scanners → your printer), cancel every pending job, and try a fresh print.
Canon printers maintain their Wi-Fi connection in the background, and it can drop after a router restart or a period of inactivity without any clear indication on the printer. Check the Wi-Fi icon on the printer's display, or print a network status page — if it shows disconnected, run through the wireless setup again.
Many Canon printers will refuse to print entirely — not just print faded output — once a specific cartridge (often black, even for a color document that shouldn't need it) drops below a minimum level. Check ink levels through the Canon PRINT app or the printer's own display, and replace whichever cartridge is flagged, even if it seems unrelated to what you're trying to print.
If you've set up more than one printer, or reinstalled this one recently, your computer may be quietly sending jobs to an old or duplicate entry rather than the physical printer in front of you. Check your default printer setting and remove any stale duplicate entries.
The background Windows service that manages print jobs can occasionally hang. Search "Services" in the Start menu, find Print Spooler, and restart it — this alone resolves a meaningful share of "nothing happens when I print" reports that have nothing to do with the printer itself.
A Windows or macOS update occasionally breaks the association between your computer and an already-installed printer driver. If the printer appears in your device list but jobs simply vanish, remove it entirely and reinstall the driver fresh from Canon's official support site.
Clear the print queue before anything else — it's the single most common cause and takes seconds to rule out. If that doesn't fix it, check the printer's own Wi-Fi status next, since a dropped connection is the second most common cause and looks identical to a driver problem from your computer's point of view.
A full driver reinstall from the official source resolves most remaining cases.
Find your Canon driverThe Canon PRINT app method and control-panel fallback.
Read the article →PG vs. CL, Standard vs. XL vs. XXL, and Canon's MegaTank system.
Read the article →The most common reasons, in order of likelihood.
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