How to List only Default or Active Printers in .NET?

If you want to filter for default or active printers in .NET, especially using WMI, you can do so by querying specific properties of the Win32_Printer class. Here's how you can do this.

list default printers in .net

Filter Default and Active Printers with WMI (C#)

using System;
using System.Management;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_Printer");

        foreach (ManagementObject printer in searcher.Get())
        {
            bool isDefault = Convert.ToBoolean(printer["Default"]);
            string status = printer["Status"]?.ToString() ?? "Unknown";

            if (isDefault || status.Equals("OK", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"Name: {printer["Name"]}");
                Console.WriteLine($"Default: {isDefault}");
                Console.WriteLine($"Status: {status}");
                Console.WriteLine(new string('-', 30));
            }
        }
    }
}

There are two properties that you need to understand.

1) Default: This property indicates if the printer is set as the "system default".

2) Status: The common values of the property includes "OK", "Busy", "Idle" and "Error".

You can modify the condition to suit your needs. For example, only show default and status = OK, or even include additional checks like WorkOffline = false.

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