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Schedule Print: start a print at a later date and time

Schedule Print: start a print at a later date and time


Sometimes the right moment to start a print is not now: you want the noisy machine running after everyone has gone home, or a part waiting on the bed first thing tomorrow rather than finishing at midnight. Schedule Print lets you pick the file, pick a date and time, and walk away - SimplyPrint holds the printer and makes the print eligible from the server when that time arrives, whether or not your browser is open. It sits alongside the other ways to start a print, and is the only one where you pick the exact clock time yourself.


Schedule Print is part of the Pro plan and up. On multi-user accounts, the user's role also needs the Can schedule prints permission under Settings > Organization. Account owners already have access.


A scheduled print reserves its printer from the moment you schedule it: nothing else can start on that machine until the print runs or someone cancels it. If SimplyPrint already reports the printer offline, the print waits pending; if it disappears after the start attempt begins, the attempt is cancelled after the timeout. See if the printer is not ready at the scheduled time.


Table of contents



How Schedule Print works

When you schedule a print, everything about it is decided immediately - the file, the settings and the printer are all locked in - and only the start itself is deferred. A runner on our servers checks every few seconds for prints whose time has come, so nothing on your computer has to stay awake: close the tab, log out, go home.


The file is not sent to the printer in advance. At the chosen time SimplyPrint releases the print and the normal sequence begins: the printer downloads the file, then heats up. Filament therefore starts moving shortly after the minute you picked rather than exactly on it, and a large file over a slow connection can add several minutes to that.


Three things shape the time you can pick:


  • At least 1 minute from now. Anything closer is just "start it now".
  • At most 7 days ahead. The whole seventh day is available, right up to 23:59, not only the hour you happen to be scheduling at.
  • One print, one moment. There is no repeating or recurring schedule. To keep prints coming without picking a time each morning, use the print queue with AutoPrint.


From the moment you schedule, two things are set aside for that print:


  • The printer is reserved. It shows a pending print, and nothing else can be started on it - not by you, not by 1-Click Print, not by AutoPrint. That reservation is the point: it is what makes the print able to run at 3am.
  • Your print allowance is set aside, on accounts where an admin gives users print allowances (School and Enterprise), and only for users a policy actually applies to - account owners are exempt. Where it applies, the allowance is reserved along with the printer, so an overnight job cannot be blocked by the quota being spent during the day.


Schedule Print is built on the same waiting queue as Staggered Start, which is why prints from both features sit in the same waiting state on the printer. The comparison table below says which one you want.


Scheduling a print from your files

This is the main route, and the only one with the quick presets. The printer has to be online and idle: you cannot line up a schedule on a printer that is currently printing, paused, downloading or offline.


  1. On the printers page, click Start print on the printer you want, or select several printers and use Start prints.
  2. Choose the file you want to print, and set your usual start options. The scheduling control only appears once a printable file is selected, which is the most common reason it seems to be missing.
  3. In the right-hand pane, tick Schedule for later.
  4. Pick an exact date and time, or use one of the quick choices underneath: 1 hour, 4 hours or Tomorrow. Choose Start at to use that instant as the start time, or Finish by to have SimplyPrint derive a start time from the estimated duration. The line underneath confirms the resulting start as a day-relative label - Today 14:00, Tomorrow, 13:30, a short weekday for anything else this week, or the full date beyond that.
  5. Click Schedule print. Until you pick a time that button reads Start print, or Send to printer if your account does not start prints automatically.


Here is the whole control, with a time picked:


The "Schedule for later" checkbox in the start-print file selector, with the date and time picker, quick choices and reservation note.


A Print scheduled confirmation tells you exactly when the print will start and reminds you that the printer stays reserved until then. If you selected several printers, each one gets its own scheduled print at the same moment.


The Tomorrow preset is exactly 24 hours from now, not "tomorrow morning". Press it at 23:30 and you get 23:30 the following night. Use the picker when you want a specific hour.


Scheduling when you pick printers first

Some flows ask you to pick printers rather than a file: starting an item from the print queue with Start on printer(s), reprinting from your print history, sending a file from your files, or printing a slice out of the Cloud Slicer. In all of them the scheduling option lives behind the arrow next to the confirm button (Start on printers, or Send to printers when your account does not start prints automatically): open it and choose Schedule for later. Same 1-minute and 7-day limits, no quick presets - the picker opens on the next round hour.


If your account has exactly one printer and that printer has no multi-material system, starting an item from the print queue skips printer selection and starts the print straight away, so no scheduling option appears there. Start that file from the printer's own Start print button instead when you want to schedule it. Reprint, the files sidebar and the Cloud Slicer always open the printer picker, so Schedule for later is available in those however many printers you have.


What a scheduled print looks like while it waits

Three places show a print that has not started yet.


On the printers page, the printer's status square turns blue and reads Starts 23:04 for a time later today, Starts Tomorrow, 13:30 for tomorrow, the weekday for anything else within the coming week, and the full date beyond that, next to the file name. Start now and Cancel actions appear on the card:


A printer card on the printers page showing the blue scheduled state, file name, Start now and Cancel actions.


A blue card that names a start time is Schedule Print. A blue card reading Pending start has no fixed time, and means one of two things: Staggered Start is holding the print until a slot frees up, or a scheduled print's time has already come and it is now waiting on the printer.


In the printer's control panel, a Scheduled section appears below the usual print buttons, which stay exactly where they are. It shows the status ("Starts" plus the date and time), a View details link to the print job, the three action buttons covered in the next section, and a collapsible Job timeline & data view underneath them:


The "Scheduled" widget in the printer control panel, with the status line and the Change time, Start now and Cancel buttons.


On the print history page, a Waiting to start section sits above your normal history with a count of everything queued up, listing File, Printer, Starts and Status - plus Added by if your account lets you see other users. Scheduled prints carry a blue Scheduled badge; prints held back by Staggered Start appear in the same table with a Waiting or Downloading badge and no fixed time. Click any row to open that job:


The "Waiting to start" table above the print history, with a scheduled print showing its start time and a blue Scheduled badge.


The section is hidden entirely when nothing is waiting, and it only keeps itself up to date while something is already listed - so if you scheduled a print from somewhere else while this page was open, reload the page to see it. A scheduled print is not in the history list underneath it until it starts, because history only lists prints that actually began.


Changing the time, starting now, or cancelling

A scheduled print is not locked in. The Scheduled widget in the printer's control panel carries all three actions:


  • Change time - reopens the picker so you can move the print, within the same 1-minute and 7-day window. Only while the print is still scheduled: once its time has passed, there is no schedule left to change.
  • Start now - drops the schedule and hands the print to the normal start path. It usually begins within a few seconds. If the printer is covered by a Staggered Start group, the print joins that group's queue instead of starting instantly, and if the printer is busy it simply waits like any other pending print. A printer that is not connected to SimplyPrint behaves as described in if the printer is not ready at the scheduled time.
  • Cancel - drops the print entirely and releases the printer, returning any print allowance that was set aside.


Scheduled rows in the Waiting to start table carry the same three actions: Change time, Start now and Cancel. Change time and Start now disappear once the scheduled time has passed and the print is simply waiting for capacity:


A hovered scheduled row in the "Waiting to start" table showing Change time, Start now and Cancel actions.


Start now and Cancel ask you to confirm first.


Who can schedule a print

Scheduling is gated on the plan and on a permission at the same time:


  • Plan. Schedule Print is on Pro and up. On lower plans the Schedule for later checkbox is still visible in the file selector, but locked, with an upgrade prompt. The option behind the printer-picker arrow is visible on any plan too, and shows the same upgrade prompt when you click it.
  • Permission. Users need Can schedule prints on their base role, or on a workgroup, under Settings > Organization: open the role and find it under Printing in the basics, next to Can print, which it depends on. Without the permission the checkbox is not shown at all rather than locked. Existing base roles that can print keep scheduling access when the feature is introduced; workgroups remain opt-in, and an administrator can adjust either. Base roles and permissions come with the Print Farm plan and up - on Pro there are no roles to split, so everyone in the account can schedule.


Two deliberate exceptions:


  • Cancelling a pending print only needs the normal cancel-print permission, so a scheduled print can always be cancelled, even by someone without Schedule Print.
  • Other people's prints. Rescheduling or cancelling someone else's scheduled print needs the permission to cancel other users' prints, and the Waiting to start table only lists other users' prints for people who can view all print history. Two colleagues can legitimately see different counts there.


Schedule Print vs Staggered Start vs AutoPrint

All three decide something about when a print begins, but they answer different questions. In one line: Staggered Start decides the order prints begin in when capacity frees up, Schedule Print decides when one specific print is allowed to begin, and AutoPrint decides whether another print begins at all.



Schedule Print

Staggered Start

AutoPrint

What it decides

When one specific print may begin

The order prints begin in, and how many at once

Whether the next queue item starts by itself

You choose

A date and time, per print

Heating and download limits, per group of printers

A bed-clearing method, per printer

What triggers the start

The clock

A heating or download slot freeing up

A print finishing and the bed being cleared

Scope

The one print you scheduled

Every print start on covered printers

The printers you switch it on for

Plan

Pro and up

Print Farm, School and Enterprise

Pro and up


They compose rather than compete. A print scheduled for 02:00 is released at 02:00 and then takes its turn for a heating slot in its stagger group, so a farm cannot trip a breaker by scheduling forty prints for the same minute.


If the printer is not ready at the scheduled time

When the time arrives, SimplyPrint clears the schedule whether or not the printer is ready, and then tries to send the file. What happens next depends on why it was not ready:


  • Busy, paused or in an error state. The print stays on the printer as an ordinary pending print with no fixed time, and starts when the printer is free again. In Waiting to start it loses its blue Scheduled badge and its start time, and with them the play icon - Cancel is the only action left on the row.
  • Already reported offline. The print stays pending until the printer reconnects. Its fixed time is gone, but the booking and printer reservation remain.
  • Drops off during the start attempt. If the printer still looked ready when SimplyPrint issued the start but then disappeared, SimplyPrint retries with increasing delays. The attempt is eventually cancelled after the retry window, and the printer is released rather than left stuck.


Check that the printer is online before you leave, and cancel the scheduled print on any machine you are taking out of service. If a print you expected did not run, look at Waiting to start on the print history page: if it is still listed, it is waiting for the printer; if it is gone, the start attempt failed and was cancelled.


Edge cases and things to know

  • The time you pick is the clock of the device you pick it on. The picker reads your computer's own clock and timezone. The panel then shows that instant back to everyone in their account's date and time format, so a colleague in another timezone sees the same moment at their own local hour.
  • Working hours do not apply. A scheduled print becomes eligible at the time you picked and starts when the printer is ready. Working hours shape queue estimates and AutoPrint's behaviour, not a time you chose deliberately.
  • Notifications are the normal ones. A scheduled print is set up to start on its own, so it carries your usual print notification settings from the moment you schedule it, and alerts you exactly as a print you started by hand would.
  • Losing Pro cancels scheduled prints. If the account is downgraded off a plan with Schedule Print while prints are still scheduled, those prints are cancelled rather than started, and the printers are released.
  • Deleting its printer also cancels the print. A scheduled print is not moved to another printer when its reserved printer is deleted.
  • "Start now" is not literally instant. It removes the schedule; the print then starts on the next server pass, a few seconds later, and only if the printer is actually ready.


Scheduling works outside the panel too. The API's create-print-job call takes a schedule_for time, and SimplyPrint's MCP server exposes list_scheduled_prints, reschedule_print and cancel_scheduled_print for automations and assistants. Neither can schedule "whatever is next in the queue" - the queue will have moved on by the time it runs, so you have to name a specific file or queue item.



Updated on: 24/08/2026

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