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...

Chad-BISD wrote:

I called Apple Business and EDU Support and spoke with an agent. They acted like they had no bug reports and no awareness of this issue. My next steps are to perform a fresh install of the affected OS's (14.8, 14.8.1, 15.7, 15.7.1) and see if the issue recurs. They alway want me to try a fresh install without my MDM (Jamf School) and also with and without my printer management client (Vasion Print/PrinterLogic). So they've given me about 20 hours of homework before they'll help me any further. I tried pointing them to google and threads here, on MacRumers, and on Reddit, but was a no. I also tried to get them to take some log files to review to see if they could track down exactly when/why the printers disappear. Apple will not take log files until I've done the fresh installs, with and without MDM, with and without printer management client.

I'm part of a 2 person IT team for a small school district. I don't have time for this right now.

My boss confirmed the issue occurs without any MDM management on someone's personal Mac which he supports.

Our MDM engineers have discovered that it seems like a bug with the ARD agent where a nightly System Profile check deletes the printers. You can use ARD to disable the "System Profile" reporting. In ARD select the client(s) and "Get Info". On the "Reporting" tab, uncheck "System Profiler". So far this has fixed the issue on our end. Perhaps you can give that information to the Apple agent assisting you so a proper fix can be implemented if it also works for you.

I wonder if those experiencing this issue, use Apple Remote Desktop. If you do I believe there is a bug linked to reporting feature. By default it collects reports at midnight. I did run tests on multiple machines. If you change time from midnight to something else, as long printers exist, they we be deleted at new scheduled (report schedule) time. For now I would suggest to disable reporting (or maybe tweak it). We updated ARP to latest version, but still we experienced it. Hope Apple can fix it, as this is technically damage limitation than fix, as you have to disable reporting per machine(s) and we all agree report generation should not result in devices settings being removed.

Hope others can confirm it did work for them too.

Hi All. I noticed this issue a couple of weeks back after updating a couple of print servers to 15.7.1. I have been testing over the last few days to confirm if the issue was an macOS issue or the fact that both servers were running Papercut print monitoring software. I confirmed recently that this is independent of Papercut, and thanks to the conversation below can confirm its to do with a scheduled report connection in Apple Remote Desktop. On my testbed running 15.7.1 if I create printers then run a Report request from Apple Remote Desktop then the printers disappear in front of my eyes. I've confirmed this does NOT happen on a machine running macOS 26.0.1 or 26.1 (released today), and 15.7.2 may also fix it. (Doesn't remove the printers on a report collection but will see what happens overnight).

macOS Sequoia 15.7.2 released this week appears to fix the vanishing printers issue.

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

I'm happy to report that this issue seems to be resolved with the 15.7.2 update released on Monday Nov 3rd. Not sure if the Sonoma 14.8.2 update released on the same day was a fix for this under Sonoma as we didn't have any systems running Sonoma which experienced the printer reset, but I'm betting it did.

I can confirm that turning OFF everything in the ARD Reporting Settings (my second screenshot above) appears to be a valid workaround to keep all printers from being deleted overnight.

Can anyone confirm if this BUG is still present once the 15.7.2 update gets installed on the client machines?

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

the "disable system reporting within ARD" fixed the vanishing printer queu's issue on customer iMac M2 running 14.8.1 and my own intel MacBook running 14.8.2,

tested with time set manually, while system reporting enabled, printer queu vanished,

than set system-reporting disabled, time manually to 23:55, restart, queu stayed

double checked time 23:55 system reporting enabled, reboot printer-queu vanished again at 00:00something

posted also on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/macsysadmin/comments/1nqbjm6/updating_to_latest_macos_patch_157_or_148_deletes/

(and while i was at customer site also upraded the iMac to Sequoia 15.7.2)

This ARD fix worked for us in our environment, disabled "System Profile" reporting and printers remain intact.

Yes, can confirm the issue is resolved with the 15.7.2 update!

jbodine74 wrote:

I tried what you suggested with Apple Remote Desktop and it didn't work. All my printers we gone again. What I have been doing to resolve this every day is taking a backup of my CUPS folder and copy/paste into the /etc/cups folder and replacing everything, then reboot.

An easier method may be to just power off the Mac over night so the printers are not deleted. It seems the deletions occur just after midnight. macOS can be configured to automatically shutdown & startup as specified times using the information in the following Apple article:

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