Changing printer defaults for an installed printer is fairly complicated. That's why you'll usually only find support articles for creating presets. Presets are similar to defaults but as more and more apps don't open the system print dialog window by default (Ex: Chrome, Edge) they aren't as useful as they used to be because those presets only apply when printing from the system print window. I'll go over both methods here.
1. Creating a Printer Preset
- Open an application and select File->Print. I suggest using a built-in Apple program (Preview, Pages, Notes, etc.) because those will open the System print dialog by default.
- From the Application dropdown menu (below Paper Size and Orientation) select 'Xerox Features'
- Set the 2-Sided Printing option to '2- Sided Print'
- From the Presets dropdown menu at the top of the window select 'Save Current Settings as Preset...', name the preset and click OK.
- Submit your print job.
By default MacOS should use the last preset by default the next time you print from an application that uses the system dialog box.
2. Change your printer default options.
- If you've never changed printer defaults before we need to enable the CUPS admin interface first. Open the Terminal application and type in the following command. 'cupsctl WebInterface=yes' and press enter. This almost always needs to be done again after any MacOS system update. I updated to 11.3.3 beta recently and I had to re-enable it when preparing this response.
- Now open a web browser and in the address bar enter 'localhost:631' and press enter.
- In the CUPS webpage that opens click on Administration
- Under Printers click on 'Manage Printers'
- Click on your printer name in the list of printers
- From the Administration dropdown menu select 'Set Default Options'
- Select 'Paper Output' and, using the dropdown menu, set the '2-Sided Printing' option to '2-Sided Print'
- Click 'Set Default Options' at the bottom of the screen and login with an administrator username and password if prompted.
The default setting has now been changed.
Note: CUPS stands for Common Unix Printing System (CUPS.org). MacOS may hide the Unix core that it's built on well with a pretty UI, but most long time Mac users can't ever fully avoid coming into contact with its less pretty and user friendly components at some point.
