Printer and Scanner Drivers on Apple Silicon

When Six Colors' Glenn Fleishman surveyed who was ready for the end of Rosetta 2, his verdict on one industry was blunt: “printer makers are, so far, the worst.” Our data agrees. Printer and scanner software is the single biggest cluster of Intel-only code in the catalogue: 464 distinct driver apps and helpers, seen 62,381 times across community Macs — Epson, Canon, and HP alone account for the top of the table below.

The awkward part: most of this software still works today, so nobody thinks about it. It was written once, bundled with a scanner sold in 2016, and never touched again. When macOS 28 removes Rosetta 2 in late 2027, it doesn't degrade — it stops launching.

What actually breaks — and what doesn't

Your printer hardware is fine. macOS has printed driverless over AirPrint for a decade, and Image Capture scans from most network scanners without any vendor software at all. What breaks is the vendor's added layer: scan-button utilities, fax tools, ink monitors, and the background helpers with names like “Event Manager” and “Scanner Monitor” that make hardware buttons work. If your workflow is “press scan on the device and a PDF appears in a folder” — that's the part at risk.

The Intel driver software we see most

Live from the catalogue, ranked by how many community Macs report each. Every row links to a page with version history and per-app guidance.

What to do, in order

1. Check whether you need the vendor stack at all. Delete nothing yet — just try the built-in path: add the printer in System Settings (AirPrint), scan with Image Capture or Preview. For most home and small-office devices from the last ten years, that covers everything, and the Intel software becomes irrelevant.

2. If you need vendor features, check for a native update. The catalogue's per-app pages show whether the community has spotted a native build in the wild — a stronger signal than the vendor's own compatibility page, which often lags or overpromises.

3. For older or specialist hardware, plan the fallback. Label printers, film scanners, and anything discontinued before Apple Silicon may never get an update. Options that keep hardware alive: driverless via generic protocols, the open-source Gutenprint drivers, or software like VueScan that speaks to old scanners natively. Our blog has a step-by-step walkthrough of each route.

History says vendors without a sales incentive move last — several major printer brands only shipped 64-bit drivers after macOS Catalina broke the 32-bit ones. Expect the same pattern here: some of the software in the table above will be updated in a rush during 2027, and some never will. The per-app pages track it either way.

How this data is collected and verified: methodology. Tables update live as the community reports.