Let the app change my printing preferences

Question

this "Let the app change my printing preferences" simple setting by M$ has confused users than doing anything useful.

why can't just let users choose the printing setting directly from the dialog provided by the printer?

stop wasting the resources to take over the printing dialog box from the printer.

and nobody knows which exactly the settings will be used for the output.

let the original dialog box from printer driver do their job!

Answer 1

Hello Russell Stewart,

I understand what you're asking for. That said, there isn't a built-in toggle to permanently turn that checkbox off — it's part of the newer unified print dialog and tends to reset.

The workaround that actually sticks is to switch back to the legacy print dialog, which doesn't have that behavior:

• Open Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Print\UnifiedPrintDialog
• Create a DWORD named PreferLegacyPrintDialog and set it to 1
• Or run: reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Print\UnifiedPrintDialog" /v PreferLegacyPrintDialog /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Since it's a per-user (HKCU) key, you can push it out to staff if you're managing several machines. After that, the print dialog should respect your driver defaults instead of the per-job "let the app change..." option.

If you'd like Microsoft to add a proper setting to disable that checkbox, the Feedback Hub app is the right place to raise it, since the default-ticked behavior is a design choice on their end.

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Answer 2

Let the app change my printing preferences