Printing labels and documents¶

Pantry Raider can print food labels for your pantry and send a recipe to a regular printer when you would rather cook from paper. Printing is off until you turn it on, and nothing about your setup changes until you do.

For the small Bluetooth thermal label printers and the exact steps to pair one, see Label printing hardware. This page covers what you can print, adding a printer, sharing printers across your devices, and designing your own label.

What you can print¶

Food labels. Print a label for any item straight from your inventory, or a whole batch at once when you bring in new stock. A food label carries the name, the date you added it, and the best-by date, with a small chip next to the best-by that says how that date was set: you typed it, it came from the built-in shelf-life rules (shown as "est."), or the AI worked it out (shown as "AI"). A date you edit yourself prints with no caveat. A label printed for something in your inventory also carries a small square scan-to-use-up code identifying the exact container it is stuck on: when that container is finished, scan the label and that entry comes off your stock, the right one even when three of the same thing sit in the fridge with different dates. It is the same code Grocy's own scanners understand, and it follows whichever scanning mode is active (during a stock count the scan just counts the item, nothing is removed). Labels for things that are not in your inventory, and labels too small for a readable code, print exactly as before.
Spice and decorative labels. A label maker for spice jars and the like: your own text, centered and clean, with no dates.
Recipes and documents. Send a recipe to an ordinary document printer from the Cook page or from the quick view on the Recipes page, so you can cook from a printed copy.

Turning printing on¶

Printing runs on the standard printing system that every desktop operating system uses, so networked, USB, and Bluetooth label printers work once they are set up alongside ordinary document printers. Turn it on from Settings, Printing. On a kitchen appliance the first setup takes a few minutes while it installs the printing support for you; on a device that already has a print system it is quick.

Printing is a per-device choice. A device without a printer simply keeps printing off, no matter what the rest of your kitchen does.

Adding a printer¶

The Printing settings have an "Add a printer" panel, so you never need the command line:

Find printers looks across your network and lists what it finds, so you can add one with a click. Each one gets a name box, filled in with a sensible default, that you can edit before adding.
Add by address lets you type a printer in by its host name or IP when it does not turn up on its own.

Driverless (IPP Everywhere) printers, plain network printers, and Zebra ZPL label printers are all supported, and a printer you add shows up in the label and document printer lists right away. A Zebra label printer prints the rendered food and spice labels, not just raw text, so an industrial label printer works alongside the small thermal and office printers. For the pocket Bluetooth label printers, including setting one up right from Settings, see Label printing hardware.

One label printer and one document printer for the whole kitchen¶

Printers are set once, on your main server, and every other device (a satellite, a thin display pointed at your main server) prints through them. That keeps one label printer and one document printer for the whole setup instead of each screen needing its own. If you connect a printer to a satellite instead, over Bluetooth or its network, it is shared up to the server automatically and chosen there; a satellite's own Printing settings show the server's printers for reference and a place to add a printer to share up, rather than a printer choice of its own.

When you turn printing on, each device shares its printers with the others on your network (a label printer attached to the kitchen appliance is then reachable from a tablet or a second screen with nothing to plug in again), and the main server is where you point every device at the one printer you want them all using. A main server with no printer of its own can print to a printer another device hosts the same way. Sharing stays on your local network: nothing is exposed to the internet.

Printing is also built to shrug off a bad moment: a failed job is retried and the queue moves on, so a shared printer that is briefly unreachable no longer quietly pauses all printing until someone re-enables the queue by hand.

Designing your own label¶

Settings, Printing has a label designer on the main server. The design you save there travels to every satellite display, so a satellite that has the label printer prints the same layout (name, dates, QR code, and the rest) you set up centrally, not a plain fallback; only the physical label size stays set per device, and the design re-fits itself to whatever stock each printer is loaded with. Pick a format (2x1, address, 2.25x1.25, 3x2, 4x6 shipping, or a square spice label), a metric size (40x30mm, 50x30mm, 40x60mm, or 62x29mm), or pull the sizes your own label printer actually advertises and pick one instead of guessing the measurements. Then drag the fields you want onto a to-scale label and drop them where you like: the name, the added and best-by dates, the source chip, quantity, location, your own text, or a QR code. A QR code can carry plain text or contact details, not just a web address. Give any element an outline, drop a small decorative icon on a spice or decorative label, and turn on Show logo to add a small Pantry Raider mark to the corner of a label.

If your stock is a square or round die-cut label, set the label shape to match. Square and round labels are equal on every side, so the designer keeps the width and height the same for you. Round also draws a circle on the design canvas, marking the printable area, so you can keep the text and the logo inside the edge and nothing important lands in a corner that gets trimmed away.

A live preview shows the real printed label as you go. Save and reload named designs so you can switch between label layouts without rebuilding one from scratch, and once you save a design, every label prints your way; leave the designer alone and labels keep the tidy default. If you navigate away with unsaved changes, the designer asks first, so a stray tap does not lose a layout you were working on.

Printing recipes and other documents¶

A printed recipe leads with its name and a quick-facts line (prep, cook, and total time, plus how many it serves) next to the Pantry Raider mark, then ingredients (grouped under their section headings when the recipe has them) and numbered steps. Long ingredient lists print in two columns and the text sizes down when a recipe runs long, so most recipes come out on a single sheet, in plain black and white for any printer.

Settings, Printing also has advanced document printer settings: page size, color or black and white, and single or double sided, for recipe and document printouts.

A couple of everyday touches¶

A big batch asks first. Printing more than five labels at once (for example after a large import) shows a quick confirmation with the count, so a stray tap cannot burn a roll of labels.
A repeat print asks first too. Printing the same recipe again within a minute of the last print asks first, so a double tap does not send it to the printer twice.
A quick on-screen confirmation, not a popup. Printing a label or a recipe shows a brief confirmation on screen instead of a popup you have to dismiss, so you know it went to the printer without it interrupting you.
Print from where you are. Both the Cook page and the recipe quick view on the Recipes page have a Print button when printing is on, so you can send a recipe to your document printer without opening it first.