Printers Vanishing from System Settings after macOS Sequoia

My organization has seen this after the macOS 14.8 & 14.8.1, and macOS 15.7 & 15.7.1. We've discovered that it occurs at midnight every day. Currently our next step is to tell people to completely shutdown their Macs each day until Apple resolves this issue. We have not tested this yet since we were hoping the 14.8.1 & 15.7.1 updates would have fixed it.

I highly recommend you contact Apple to make them aware of the issue. If people don't report issues to Apple then Apple doesn't know how widespread the problem is, nor will they have enough details from user's systems to understand the issue.

Have seen that issue also...currently running MacOS 15.7.1 (public release). Postings elsewhere by other users indicated the printer loss does not occur if the computer is in "sleep" mode. Accordingly, the workaround implemented here is to set a repeating sleep/wake "Power Event" to sleep just before midnight and wake just after midnight. After testing for several days following setting that event pair, no printer has disappeared.

Easy individual terminal command or push out to all machines using something like Apple Remote Desktop or whatever else might be in use for multiple computer management.

Set Repeating (Daily) Sleep/Wake Event Pair:

sudo pmset repeat sleep MTWRFSU 23:50:00 wake MTWRFSU 00:10:00

View all options with "man pmset" (no quotes)

Have reported issue to Apple via my developer account...

Ben Rigsby wrote:

So I have been shutting down at the end of each day. The printers have remained as they should. Starting up each morning is faster than adding back 5 printers. I hope everyone is submitting feedback to Apple.

thanks

Ben.

Thanks for the update. I haven't seen any mention of losing printers since we've had our users shutdown their Macs at night, nor have we had any new reports since we blocked the 14.8, 14.8.1, 15.7, & 15.7.1 updates.

FYI, you can schedule macOS to automatically shutdown and/or power on by using the information in the following Apple article.....unfortunately it now requires use of the Terminal command line since they removed the easier to configure options from the System Settings GUI interface:

Schedule your Mac to turn on or off in Terminal - Apple Support

Although my (Terminal) pmset "sleep/wake" seems to work most of the time, should anyone be interested, changing the command types (see below) would instead power down and powerup at the desired times. The command needed would then become (shutting down ten minutes before midnight and powering up ten minutes after midnight, seven days a week):

sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 23:50:00 poweron MTWRFSU 00:10:00

I believe that setting a new repeat pair would replace the old pair, but just to be sure:

sudo pmset repeat cancel

Regret that while my pmset "sleep" approach seemed to be working over several days, with printers remaining present, the issue re-appeared overnight. So more research is needed, along with continued feedback to Apple.

Michael Strum wrote:

Does anyone know if any recent pre-release of macOS Sequoia has included a fix for this super annoying BUG yet!?

FYI, it is against this forum's Terms of Use to post anything about any beta software or unreleased versions of macOS.

Similar issue with family member who lost the ability to print after an update (don't know what particular update caused the issue).

Envioronment:

M4 imac

MacOS: Sequoia 15.7

Epson: XP-2100 Series printer

Tried all suggestions in community posts but no success.

Appeared to be an OS issue as all printers disappeared in Settings | Printers & Scanners

Could not select a driver even though re-installed printer drivers and could see the printer via bonjour and web GUI.

Took a punt and applied macOS Tahoe 26.01

Miraculously we could now set the printer driver and re-add the printer.

Issue resolved.

Thanks to all those who tried and posted their results. Much appreciated to know we weren't the only ones experiencing a similar problem

Does anyone know if any recent pre-release of macOS Sequoia has included a fix for this super annoying BUG yet!?