Before you are ready to print postage for your shipments, you’ll want to make sure you’ve installed and set up your printer. Your Chit Chats account is optimized for printing postage labels on thermal label printers that use the Zebra programming language (ZPL). These include almost all Zebra printers and some models of Citizen and Dymo printers.
- e.g. Zebra ZP450, Zebra LP 2844-Z, Zebra GX420D, DYMO LabelWriter 4XL, Citizen CL-S521
While we strongly recommend using a ZPL thermal printer for printing postage from the Chit Chats platform, we also have instructions for printing your labels from your non-ZPL thermal printer or standard desktop printer.
Connect your printer
If you have already configured your printer for your computer, please skip to the next section.
Before you begin the printer setup, ensure that your printer is connected to your computer and a power source. You should be prompted to install the printer driver after connecting to your computer. If not, you can do a quick search for the driver online or use this tool to find the appropriate driver.
For Mac users, add the printer via System Preferences:
- Navigate to System Preferences > Printers
- Click the ‘+’ to add the printer (provide password of an administrator account if necessary). Select the ZPL printer from the list of printers.
- For the driver click “Select Software” and choose the “Zebra ZPL Printer” from the available options.
You can make a test print on your printer to make sure it is properly connected by heading to your printer settings. If you experience difficulties with connecting your printer, we recommend contacting your printer’s manufacturer for technical support or checking out our troubleshooting tips.
Set up your printer with Chit Chats
When setting up to print labels from your ZPL printer, we recommend first installing Java 8 or higher on your computer. This helps with the performance of QZ Tray, the printer plugin used on the Chit Chats platform to print postage. For more information, check out the minimum system requirements for QZ.
Next, follow the steps as outlined on our printer setup page:
- Download and Install the latest 2.x version of QZ Tray.
- Ensure that the QZ Tray application is running. Check for a green QZ Tray icon on your taskbar. If the icon is any other colour, click the icon and hit ‘Reload’.
- Select your ZPL printer from the list of available connected printers.
Ensure that the Raw (ZPL) printing format is selected. If not, click on ‘Not the right format?’ and select the correct format.
- Print a test label to check the connection and label alignment. Your printer should now be ready to print postage labels from the Chit Chats platform.
If the above steps do not work for you, you may need to try our Chit Chats Printer App or our advanced instructions.