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Tauri Plugin Thermal Printer is a Tauri v2 plugin that gives your desktop and Android applications a clean TypeScript/JavaScript API for printing to ESC/POS thermal printers. Instead of wrestling with raw escape-sequence bytes or platform-specific printer drivers, you describe your receipt, label, or ticket as a structured PrintJobRequest — titles, text, tables, barcodes, QR codes, images, and more — and the plugin handles everything else: generating the binary ESC/POS commands in Rust, routing them to the correct operating-system interface, and sending them over USB, network, or Bluetooth to your printer.

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How It Works

The plugin acts as a translator between a friendly JavaScript/TypeScript API and the low-level binary protocol that thermal printers speak. All ESC/POS command generation is done in a single shared Rust pipeline (ProcessPrint), so receipts look identical regardless of platform. 
Frontend (TypeScript)
    ↓  IPC commands via @tauri-apps/api
Tauri Core (Rust)  ←— ESC/POS generation (shared across all platforms)
    ↓  Platform-specific dispatch
    ├── Desktop (Linux / macOS / Windows)
    │       ↓  Raw binary data
    │   Operating System printer subsystem (CUPS / WinAPI)
    │       ↓
    │   Thermal Printer (ESC/POS protocol)
    │
    └── Android — Kotlin plugin
            ↓  Bluetooth SPP / RFCOMM
        Thermal Printer (ESC/POS protocol)
The three Tauri commands exposed to your frontend are:
  • list_thermal_printers() — enumerate available printers on the current system
  • print_thermal_printer(job) — send a structured print job to a named printer
  • test_thermal_printer(request) — run a built-in test print to verify a printer works

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Platform Support

PlatformSupportedNotes
Linux✅Fully functional via CUPS (lpstat, lp)
macOS✅Fully functional via CUPS
Windows✅Fully functional via WinAPI (EnumPrintersW, WritePrinter)
Android✅Bluetooth (SPP/RFCOMM) and USB printer discovery
iOS❌Not implemented

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Connection Type Support

ConnectionLinuxmacOSWindowsAndroid
USB✅✅✅✅ (discovery only)
Network✅✅✅❌
Bluetooth❌❌❌✅
On Android the printer field in PrintJobRequest must be the Bluetooth MAC address of a previously paired printer (e.g. "AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF"). Bluetooth runtime permissions are requested automatically — you do not need to declare them yourself.

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Key Features

Cross-Platform Printing

A single TypeScript API targets Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android. ESC/POS generation is shared across all platforms in Rust, so output is byte-for-byte consistent.

Rich Section Types

Build print jobs from titles, subtitles, plain text, tables, barcodes, QR codes, DataMatrix, PDF417, images, logos, separator lines, paper cuts, beeps, and cash-drawer pulses.

Builder Helpers

The npm package ships typed builder functions — title(), text(), line(), cut(), qr(), barcode(), and more — so you never write raw object literals or guess enum names.

Style Constants

Exported constants (TEXT_ALIGN, TEXT_SIZE, BARCODE_TYPE, QR_ERROR_CORRECTION, …) give you autocomplete-friendly access to every string value the plugin accepts.

Flexible Encoding

CodePage lets you choose the ESC t n page number sent to the printer and the host-side encoding strategy (ENCODE.WINDOWS_1252, ENCODE.GBK, ENCODE.SHIFT_JIS, ENCODE.ACCENT_REMOVER, and every encoding_rs static).

Tauri v2 Permissions

Three granular capabilities — allow-list-thermal-printers, allow-print-thermal-printer, allow-test-thermal-printer — integrate with Tauri v2’s capability system so you only grant what your app needs.

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Version Information

PackageVersion
tauri-plugin-thermal-printer (Rust crate)2.0.1
tauri-plugin-thermal-printer (npm package)2.0.1
Tauriv2
Breaking change in v2.0.0: The PrinterOptions interface was removed to simplify configuration. The options field in PrintJobRequest now directly accepts a CodePage object. The shorthand boolean fields cut_paper, beep, and open_cash_drawer were also removed — if you need these actions, add explicit sections (e.g. { "Cut": { "mode": "partial", "feed": 0 } }) to the end of your sections array.

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