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🖨️ Remote Printing

Print on Office Printer From Home With Tailscale Subnet Router

The invoice is ready at home but the printer sits in the office — and a printer cannot install Tailscale. True, and not a dead end. One office device can carry the printer onto your private network.

✍️ Technical Anshu🪟 Windows and Network Printers⏱️ 7 minute read
🎥 Watch the full video — build the Tailscale network first, then extend it to the printer with this guide

Tailscale reaches anything that can run its app — PCs, phones, servers. A network printer cannot run the app, so it never appears in your device list, and your print job has no road to it. The solution is not to expose the printer to the internet — printer ports are attacked just like RDP ports. The solution is a bridge: one office PC that is already on Tailscale also stands on the office LAN, and through it, the printer becomes reachable by its normal office address — privately, for your devices only.

The Road Your Print Job Travels
🏠 Home laptop — sends the printTailscale on
🖥️ Office PC — subnet router for the office LAN192.168.1.0/24 approved
🖨️ Office printer — ordinary LAN address, unchanged192.168.1.50
🌍 Open ports on the office routerNone SAFE
☝️ The printer keeps its normal office address — the subnet router PC is the bridge between your private network and the office LAN
1

The Simple Method — Print Through a Shared Office PC

If the printer is installed on an office PC (by USB or network) and that PC is on Tailscale, this takes five minutes and needs no subnet routing at all.

  1. On the office PC, open Settings, Bluetooth and devices, Printers and scanners, select the printer, and turn on Share this printer in its properties
  2. From home, press Windows + R and open the office PC by its Tailscale address — \\100.84.12.37 using your PC's real address
  3. Double-click the shared printer and sign in with the office PC's username and password. Windows installs it as a printer on your home PC
  4. Print as usual. The job travels the tunnel to the office PC, which hands it to the printer
  5. The condition is honest and obvious — that office PC must be on whenever anyone prints this way
2

The Full Method — Turn the Office PC Into a Subnet Router

This reaches the printer directly at its LAN address, and as a bonus reaches anything else on the office network — an old server, a DVR, a NAS — without installing Tailscale on any of them.

  1. First, give the printer a fixed LAN address — reserve it in the router's DHCP settings (for example 192.168.1.50), so its address can never drift
  2. On the office PC, open an administrator Command Prompt or Terminal and run tailscale up --advertise-routes=192.168.1.0/24, replacing the range with your office LAN's real range if it differs
  3. Sign in to the Tailscale admin console, open the office PC's machine page, and approve the advertised subnet route. Until approved, nothing flows — this approval step is a deliberate safety gate
  4. On Windows home PCs, subnet routes are accepted automatically. You are ready to add the printer
3

Add the Printer at Home by Its Office Address

  1. At home, with Tailscale connected, first confirm the bridge works — run ping 192.168.1.50 using the printer's real address. Replies mean your home PC can now see the office LAN
  2. Open Settings, Bluetooth and devices, Printers and scanners, Add device, and when Windows does not find it, choose the option to add manually by IP address
  3. Enter the printer's office LAN address and let Windows fetch or select the correct driver — use the manufacturer's driver for your exact model if the generic one misbehaves
  4. Print a test page. Somebody in the office confirming paper came out is the final proof
4

When Printing Fails — Check in This Order

  1. Ping fails entirely — the route is not approved in the console, the office PC is off or asleep, or you advertised the wrong LAN range. Fix the foundation before touching printer settings
  2. Ping works, printer will not add — usually a driver mismatch or the printer's own web or sharing settings. Try the manufacturer's full driver package
  3. Prints reach the queue but sit there — the office PC acting as the bridge went to sleep mid-job. Set it to never sleep, like any server
  4. Worked last week, dead today — check the printer still owns the reserved address, and that the office PC was not reinstalled or signed out of Tailscale
5

Set the Safety Boundary Before You Finish ⭐

  1. A subnet router opens the whole office LAN to tailnet devices, not just the printer. Approve routes only on a PC you trust, and only for the range you actually need
  2. Use Tailscale's admin controls to decide which users get the route. The owner printing invoices does not mean every invited device needs the run of the office network
  3. Never solve printer access by forwarding printer ports on the office router. Network printers have a long history of weak built-in security and are not built to face the internet
  4. Keep printed material in mind too — a page sent from home sits in the office tray until someone collects it. Sensitive documents deserve a walk to the printer, or a hold-and-release print setting if the model supports it

🎥 Watch the Base Setup in the Full Video

The video builds the Tailscale network between office and home — once that is live, this guide's subnet router step extends it to your printer.

▶️ Watch Full Video
❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Can I scan from the office scanner to my home PC the same way?

Sometimes. Basic network scanning works for many models once the device is reachable by its LAN address, but scan-to-folder and scan-to-PC features depend heavily on the manufacturer's software and often expect a simple local network. Treat printing as the dependable win, test scanning with your exact model, and keep expectations modest.

Does the office PC have to stay on for the subnet router method?

Yes. The subnet router is the bridge, so while it is off or asleep, the office LAN is unreachable from your tailnet even though the printer itself is awake. Offices that print from home regularly usually nominate one always-on PC as the bridge — the same machine that hosts Tally or files is a natural choice.

My office LAN and home LAN both use 192.168.1.x. Will that clash?

It can. If both networks use the same range, your home PC may try to reach its own local devices instead of routing across the tunnel. The clean fix is to renumber one network — most offices change the home router or the office router to a different range such as 192.168.10.x. It is a one-time, fifteen-minute job that removes a whole class of strange behaviour.

This guide is based on the Technical Anshu no static IP remote access video • Stuck on any step? Ask in the video comments — help is available there 🙏