Canon PIXMA G2010 on Apple Silicon macOS (Tahoe 26) — Complete Solution

Status: WORKING — Print ✅ Scan ✅ Built 2026-08-22 · macOS 26.6.1 (25G76) · arm64 · Zero Canon-macOS-driver involvement

This project makes a USB-only Canon PIXMA G2010 fully work on modern macOS after Canon's own driver proved defective on this OS. It combines Apple's stock CUPS tools, a natively-built open-source Gutenprint driver, and a tiny userspace IPP server — no sudo required for operation, no kernel extensions, no hacks.

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Quick start

Task	How
Print	Any app → choose printer G2010IPP (system default). CLI: lp file.pdf
Scan	scanimage -d "pixma:04A9183A_0C7A8F" --format=png --resolution 300 > out.png
Server down?	Double-click G2010-PrintServer.command; it safely resets the launchd-owned server

Documentation index

Doc	Contents
docs/01-DIAGNOSIS.md	Why Canon's official driver fails on Tahoe — full evidence trail
docs/02-ARCHITECTURE.md	The working solution: design, data flow, component inventory
docs/03-OPERATIONS.md	Daily usage, service control, logs, post-reboot checklist
docs/04-TROUBLESHOOTING.md	Every failure mode encountered during the build-out, symptom → cause → fix
docs/05-PROTOCOL-NOTES.md	Reverse engineering: Canon IVEC/XML-over-USB protocol, device topology
docs/06-BUILD-NOTES.md	Reproduce: rebuild Gutenprint from source exactly as done here
docs/07-DEVELOPMENT.md	Developer guide: setup, build, test, change recipes, debugging

G2010 Manager (GUI app)

A native SwiftUI menu-bar + dashboard app that supervises everything without a terminal: start/stop/restart the print server, scan with resolution/color/format options, list/cancel jobs, run maintenance, and tail logs. It is packaged as a self-contained DMG that bundles the whole runtime (no Homebrew needed at runtime).

cd G2010Manager
swift build                       # or open the built app
bash packaging/create-dmg.sh      # build the self-contained DMG

One-paragraph summary

Canon's G2000-series macOS driver (≤16.91) deadlocks on macOS 26: it queries the printer's condition (STA:10, "ink status unknown"), tries to show an acknowledgment dialog that never renders, and loops tiny status packets forever without ever sending page data. The fix bypasses Canon's Mac stack entirely: a Gutenprint 5.3.3 driver compiled natively for arm64 converts CUPS raster to Canon's printer language, chained behind Apple's own PDF rasterizer and USB backend, fronted by ippeveprinter (standalone IPP server) that the normal macOS print dialog talks to like any AirPrint printer. Scanning goes through SANE's pixma backend, which speaks Canon's scanner protocol independently.

Repository layout

g2010i/
├── README.md                  ← you are here
├── docs/                      ← the seven documents above
├── G2010Manager/              ← SwiftUI app + packaging (create-dmg.sh, Info.plist)
│   ├── Sources/               ← Swift sources (App / Models / Services / Views)
│   └── packaging/             ← DMG + icon builders
├── harness/
│   ├── printserver-control.sh ← installs/resets the launchd-owned runtime
│   ├── start-printserver.sh   ← env-safe runtime launcher template
│   └── print-pipeline.sh      ← PDF → raster → Canon stream → USB
├── launchd/                   ← checked-in LaunchAgent template
├── G2010_gutenprint/
│   └── stp-bjc-G2000-series.5.3.ppd   ← our PPD (cupsFilter points at ~/gp filter)
├── tests/
│   └── test-printserver-control.sh    ← fixture-based lifecycle tests (no hardware)
├── .github/                   ← issue/PR templates + CI/release workflows
├── gutenprint-src/            ← IGNORED — Gutenprint source (fetch per docs/06)
├── cnijfilter2-src/           ← IGNORED — Canon GPL driver (protocol reference)
├── capture/                   ← IGNORED — offline experiments
├── usb_tree.txt               ← IORegistry dump of the printer
└── scan_test.png              ← first successful scan (proof artifact)

The two IGNORED source trees are vendored upstream references and are not committed — fetch them as described in docs/06-BUILD-NOTES.md.

External runtime dependencies (Homebrew)

sane-backends · cups (keg-only: provides ippeveprinter) · libusb

Build-time only: autoconf automake libtool pkg-config

The installed runtime lives outside the privacy-protected Downloads folder at ~/Library/Application Support/G2010PrintServer; launchd logs to ~/Library/Logs/G2010PrintServer.log.

License

This project's first-party code is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later — see LICENSE. The packaged runtime bundles several upstream components under their own licenses (Gutenprint and SANE are GPL-2.0-or-later; CUPS is Apache-2.0) — see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — bug reports, docs fixes, code, and protocol knowledge are all valuable. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and the developer guide docs/07-DEVELOPMENT.md first. This project follows a Code of Conduct.

Security

To report a vulnerability, please use the private process in SECURITY.md rather than opening a public issue.