My receipt printer isn't printing
Step-by-step checks to get a receipt or kitchen printer working again.
If your orders are not printing, work through these checks in the order they are written. They are arranged by how often each one turns out to be the cause, and most problems are solved in the first two steps.
1. Check the printer itself
Before assuming the problem is in Dinerly, rule out the hardware:
- Is it powered on, with a steady status light rather than a blinking one?
- Does it have paper, and is the roll the right way round? Thermal paper only prints on one side, so a roll loaded upside down gives you blank receipts that look exactly like a printer that is not working.
- Is the lid fully closed? Most printers refuse to print at all if it is not.
- Run the printer’s own self-test, which on most models means holding the feed button while you switch it on. If the self-test does not print, the problem is the printer rather than anything in Dinerly, and no amount of changing settings will help.
2. Check the connection type
Open Settings → your location → Printers and look at how this printer is connected, because what you check next depends entirely on that:
- Sunmi Cloud printers need their own working internet connection, so look at the network light on the printer. Then compare the Sunmi serial (SN) in Dinerly with the label on the printer, character for character, since one wrong digit sends your receipts somewhere else entirely.
- LAN (network) printers need to be on the same network as the tablet that does the printing, and the IP address stored in Dinerly has to still match the printer’s actual address. Print the printer’s settings page and compare the two, because routers do reassign addresses.
- Bluetooth printers need to still be paired in the tablet’s own Bluetooth settings and to be within a few metres of it.
- Connected to this device printers need to still be set up in the tablet’s own Settings → Printer.
3. Check something is doing the printing
Bluetooth and LAN printers do not collect their own work; a tablet sends it to them. On the tablet that is supposed to be doing that, check that Print Agent → This device prints receipts is switched on, and that the tablet is awake and charged rather than sitting dark on a shelf.
See Print from the tablet you’re using for more on choosing that device.
4. Check the routing
If some things are printing and others are not, the connection is fine and the problem is in your routing rules. Open Kitchen routing and look at Effective destinations, which lists every dish along with the printer it will actually come out on.
The warning to look for is Not printed — no active printers, which means that dish currently has nowhere to go and will silently never reach the kitchen. See Send dishes to the right printer for how to fix it.
5. Test print
There is a Test print button next to every printer. Use it after each change rather than waiting for a real order, because it tells you immediately whether the last thing you did solved the problem.
Still not working?
Restart the printer first, then the Dinerly app, since a restart clears a surprising number of one-off faults.
If you have several printers, it is worth working out whether all of them are affected or only one, because the answer points in two very different directions. All of them usually means the network or the printing tablet is at fault, while one of them usually means the problem is with that particular printer.
If none of this helps, contact support and tell us the printer model, how it is connected, and whether the printer’s own self-test prints. Those three details let us skip straight past everything you have already tried.
Last updated 20 September 2026