Package-Aware Print Drivers

Important

The modern print platform is Windows' preferred means of communicating with printers. We recommend that you use Microsoft's IPP inbox class driver, along with Print Support Apps (PSA), to customize the print experience in Windows 10 and 11 for printer device development.

For more information, see Modern print platform and the Print support app design guide.

Package-aware print drivers have entries in their INF files that support point and print with packages. These entries, which make it possible for point and print to accommodate print driver dependencies on other files, can be minor and depend on the nature of the driver package.

  • If the files in the driver package are unique and are not listed in other print driver packages, use the PackageAware keyword in the INF.

  • If the files in the driver package are shared with files in other print driver packages:

    • Move the shared files into a separate core driver.
    • Use the PackageAware keyword and the CoreDriverDependencies keyword to refer to this separate core driver. This is necessary to avoid file version conflicts during various remote installation scenarios.

This section includes:

Package-Aware Print Drivers that Do Not Share Files

Package-Aware Print Drivers that Share Files