As your Shopify store grows, fulfillment starts to eat up more of your time. Packing slips, invoices, and shipping labels don’t take long to print — until you’re printing dozens or hundreds of them a day.
So it’s a fair question: Can Shopify automatically print orders?
The short answer is no — not out of the box.
Shopify offers basic printing, but it’s all manual. If you want true automation, you’ll need to connect the right tools and workflows. This post breaks down what Shopify can do natively, what it can’t, and how you can fully automate order printing with the help of a few smart setups.
What Shopify can do by default
Shopify gives merchants a simple way to print order details, but there’s no built-in option to do it automatically.
Printing through the Shopify admin
From the Orders page, you can select one or more orders and print packing slips or invoices. If you need a little more customization, Shopify offers a free app called Order Printer. It lets you create branded templates and print multiple orders in a batch.
This works fine for low-volume stores or teams that don’t mind some manual steps. But every print job still has to be triggered by someone on your team.
Manual triggers only
The core limitation is this: Shopify doesn’t offer a way to automatically print when an order is placed, paid, or fulfilled.
There’s no setting for “print on order created” or “print when tagged as local pickup.” If you want to take your hands off the keyboard and have prints triggered automatically, you’ll need to bring in an automation app that connects with your printer.
How to enable automatic printing with third-party tools
With the right setup, you can print orders automatically — right when you want them — without clicking a thing.
Connecting to a printing system
To get started, you’ll need two things:
- A local or cloud-connected printer
- A Shopify automation app that can trigger external workflows
Building workflows that fire when an order meets certain conditions is possible with the right Shopify automation app. That could be anything from “order is paid” to “order contains Product A and shipping is local.”
Once the trigger hits, the app sends the print command — often using PrintNode’s API — to the connected printer. No browser tabs, no buttons, no delay.
What you can automate
The possibilities go beyond just printing everything. You can create smart, conditional workflows based on your fulfillment needs. For example:
- Automatically print a packing slip when an order is marked as paid
- Print a custom invoice for wholesale customers only
- Route orders with specific SKUs to different printers (e.g. warehouse vs. storefront)
- Print only for local pickup or same-day delivery tags
- Combine printing with order tagging, staff notifications, and fulfillment prep
You can even include logic for batching — print once every 15 minutes, or only when more than 5 unprinted orders are waiting.
What you’ll need to set it up
To build this kind of automation, you’ll need:
- A printer that can be accessed via PrintNode or a similar service
- An automation app like Arigato that supports HTTP requests or API triggers
- A PrintNode account connected to your device(s)
- Optional: Order Printer Pro or a similar app for custom print templates
Once connected, your automation app sends the order data to PrintNode, which sends the job to your printer — hands-free.
Should you automate order printing?
For some stores, automatic printing is a game changer. For others, it may add complexity. Here’s how to think it through.
Great for busy fulfillment workflows
If you’re running a warehouse or shipping multiple orders per day, automatic printing saves serious time. It also reduces errors, since nothing depends on someone remembering to hit “Print.”
This kind of automation fits best into a larger system. Orders get tagged, routed, printed, and prepped — all without bottlenecks or extra admin work.
Not always the right fit
Some stores need a little more control. If you print gift notes, review orders manually, or build custom bundles on the fly, automated printing might be more trouble than it’s worth.
You may still benefit from batch printing workflows that run on a schedule or require a manual trigger — especially if your team uses different printers or fulfillment locations.
Use conditional workflows to stay flexible
You don’t have to go all or nothing. You can build workflows that print only when certain conditions are met.
Examples:
- Print only for orders with a certain shipping method
- Print for specific tags like “rush” or “priority”
- Print invoices but not packing slips
- Skip printing for digital-only orders
This gives you control without adding manual steps back into the process.
Shopify can’t automatically print orders on its own, but automation tools make it possible
If you’re looking for a way to fully automate your order printing process, Shopify’s native tools aren’t quite enough. You’ll still need to click, batch, and manually trigger each print job.
But with the right workflow automation app and a service like PrintNode, you can set up your store to print exactly what you need, when you need it — without touching a thing.
Shopify automation apps like Arigato Automation give you the flexibility to create smart, conditional workflows that integrate directly with your printer and fulfillment setup. It’s a powerful way to simplify your backend and keep fulfillment running smoothly as your store grows.
Want to save time, reduce errors, and stop manually clicking “Print”? With a little setup, the whole process can run itself.