Disabling Printing in Edge Chromium

Chris reached out asking for help with a particular problem that he was researching. The problem is that he wants to disable the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser from being able to print. His computer is a communal one with one account accessed by multiple employees all during work hours. For his situation group policies won't work as the employees need ready access to the system and switching accounts will slow the employees down too much. The solution for this predicament is best suited to using Registry Editor.

1. PressÊWin+R. Windows opens the Run window.
2. Type "regedit" (without quotes) and pressÊEnter. Windows opens the Registry Editor.
3. In the left-side panel, navigate to this portion of the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
4. If you don't see a subkey called "Edge" you will need to create a new subkey and name it (without quotes) "Edge". You will see what appears to be a folder in the left side titled NamingTemplates.
5. Select the new subkey that you created. (You can do this by clicking on it once.)
6. In a blank area of the right-hand window, right-click and choose New>DWORD (32-bit) Value from the pop-up window. This creates a new, unnamed data value.
7. Name the new data value "PrintingEnabled" (without quotes) and pressÊEnterÊto commit the new name. You should see two Reg_SZ data values in the right-hand window—one called (Default) and the other is the new PrintingEnabled value you just created.
8. Double-click on the PrintingEnabled value. This opens the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box.
9. In the Value Data field enter a "0" (without quotes) to disable printing or a "1" (again without quotes) to enable printing. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. PrintingEnabled with new value data entered.

10. Click OK to close the dialog box.
11. Close the Registry Editor. The changes you made take effect immediately.

With this Registry Editor modification, Chris can now disable printing and reenable it whenever he wants for his employees.

 This tip (13820) applies to Windows 10.