The print queue: manage, schedule and automate your prints

The print queue is your central hub for organising, prioritising and automating print jobs across all your printers. Whether you run a single machine or a farm of a thousand, the queue lets you line up files, decide what runs where, and let SimplyPrint match the right file to the right printer for you. This article is the home base for the whole feature: it explains what the queue is, walks through every part of the page, and points you to a focused guide for each piece.

Table of contents

• What the print queue is
• The three tabs: Queue, Timeline and To-Do
• Views: Table, List and Cards
• The summary stat cards
• Per-item options
• The item view
• Reordering the whole queue
• Starting prints
• What was already here
• What's new
• Feature availability by plan
• Related articles

What the print queue is

The print queue is a single, shared list of everything you want printed, sitting at simplyprint.io/panel/queue. You add files, set how many copies you need and any rules they should follow, and the queue keeps track of what's done, what's running and what's waiting. From there you can start prints by hand, batch-start them with 1-Click Print, or let AutoPrint run the queue hands-free.

It's built for anyone juggling more prints than they can babysit:

• Print farms line up hundreds of orders in one queue and let matching route each job to a compatible machine.
• Schools and universities collect student submissions, optionally review them, and keep the lab printing without a teacher standing over every printer.
• Makerspaces and businesses share a fleet across many people while keeping one clear, ordered list of what comes next.

The queue is one of SimplyPrint's most-used features, refined across thousands of printers in real production farms.

The three tabs: Queue, Timeline and To-Do

At the top of the queue page are three tabs. Each is its own working view of the same data, and each has a dedicated guide.

• Queue is the list itself: every item, in order, with the controls to add, sort, tag and start them. This is the view you'll spend most of your time in.
• Timeline is a live Gantt chart of every queued and printing job on a real calendar, so you can see your whole farm at a glance and get a real estimate of when everything finishes. See the print timeline.
• To-Do reads your entire queue and hands you the single highest-impact physical change that would unlock the most prints right now, as a checklist (change this filament, clear that bed). See the printer to-do list.

Views: Table, List and Cards

Inside the Queue tab, the view-mode toggle in the top right switches how items are displayed. Your choice is remembered per user, so the queue always opens the way you like it.

• Table shows everything in dense, sortable columns - the most information at once, best for power users and big queues.
• List is a lighter, roomier row layout.
• Cards gives each item a tile with a large file thumbnail, which is handy when you recognise jobs by how they look.

File thumbnails (the rendered preview of each file) appear throughout: in the queue, in the move dialog and in the printer-compatibility inspector, so you always know what a given item actually is.

The Table view's columns are yours to configure. Use the View button (the table's column controls) to show, hide and reorder columns such as file name and thumbnail, tags, printed amount, amount, printer assignment, cost, print time, filament usage, user, order number and other custom fields, date added, status, expected finish and deadline.

The summary stat cards

A row of summary cards across the top gives you the state of the whole queue at a glance: Jobs, Print time, Material usage, Cost, In progress, and Awaiting bed clear.

The Awaiting bed clear card is clickable. Its number is a count of printers that have finished but still have a print on the bed, and clicking it jumps straight to your printers page filtered to exactly those machines, so you can go clear them and free up capacity. Clearing beds is often the fastest way to get more prints running, which is also what the printer to-do list is built around.

Per-item options

Every queue item carries a set of options that control how, when and how widely it prints. You'll find them on the item itself (the row menu) and inside the item view.

• Pause holds an item in place. It keeps its position but won't be picked up by 1-Click Print, AutoPrint or a manual start until you resume it.
• Back burner moves an item to a secondary, low-priority lane. Back-burner items fill in gaps when nothing higher-priority matches. Settings control whether 1-Click Print and AutoPrint touch the back burner at all (see scheduling and distribution).
• Infinite (print indefinitely) means the amount never counts down, so the item keeps printing forever. Great for parts you always want in stock.
• Max concurrent printers caps how many printers may run one item at the same time. It pairs perfectly with infinite: set an item to infinite and cap it at, say, 2 printers, and it tops up stock without swallowing your whole fleet.
• Keep in queue when done keeps a finite item in the queue at zero remaining instead of removing it, so it's ready to restock by simply raising the amount. This is different from infinite: the count still reaches zero, the item just stays put.

The item view

Click an item to open its full view. This is the detail screen for a single queue item, and it pulls together everything about that job in one place:

• Every printer currently printing the item, and each one's expected finish.
• The counts that matter: remaining, ongoing, printed and failed.
• A full gcode analysis (print time, filament, layers and more from the sliced file).
• Printer compatibility - which printers can run this item and why a given one can't (the same logic behind why a printer won't print an item).
• A comments thread for notes between team members (Print Farm and up).
• The item's print history so you can see every attempt and outcome.

Reordering the whole queue

Items print from the top down, so order matters. You can nudge a single item by typing a new position number or dragging it, but to re-sort the whole queue at once, use the Reorder tool in the toolbar.

Reorder sorts the entire queue (or a scope you choose) by deadline, print time, material, cost, amount, date added, or any custom field, ascending or descending. It's the fast way to, say, pull every job by its deadline so the most urgent work floats to the top.

The Reorder tool, deadlines, table columns and the rest of the page's behaviour are covered in print queue settings.

Starting prints

Once items are in the queue, there are three ways to get them onto printers:

• Manual start - open an item, click to start it, and pick from the printers that match. Good for one-off control.
• 1-Click Print - SimplyPrint previews the next matching item for every available printer and starts them all with one click. You stay in the loop but skip the clicking. See 1-Click Print.
• AutoPrint - fully hands-free. When a printer finishes and its bed is cleared, AutoPrint starts the next matching item automatically, with retries. See AutoPrint.

How items get matched and shared across your fleet (scheduling order, printer distribution, never-skip and how far down the queue to look) is the same for both 1-Click Print and AutoPrint, and is explained in scheduling and distribution.

What was already here

If you've used the queue before, the core is exactly where you left it. Nothing was taken away.

Adding items

You add files to the queue from your files (the file picker) or straight from the slicer or files page, setting amount, tags, allowed printers, a deadline and custom fields as you go. Multi-plate 3MF files can be split into separate items on the way in. The full walkthrough, including plate splitting and the API, is in adding items to the queue.

Queue groups

Groups split the queue into tabs you can organise by purpose, printer or material. One important point that trips people up: choosing for printers / models / groups on a group only controls which printers its items can match and print on. It does not move items for those printers into the group. Items only enter a group when you add or move them there. Full details, including virtual queues, are in queue groups.

Tags and matching

Tags tell SimplyPrint what an item needs - filament, nozzle and any custom tags - so matching can route it to a compatible printer. You can apply tags by hand, or let smart tagging set them automatically from file metadata and filename rules. See advanced smart tagging.

Custom fields and order numbers

Custom fields attach structured data to an item, such as a customer name or a shop order number. An order number is itself a custom field, not a separate built-in column. Custom fields are available on Print Farm and up. See all about the custom fields feature.

What's new

The queue has grown a set of planning and automation tools built for running a farm honestly, not just optimistically. If you're returning, these are the things to explore:

• The print timeline - a live Gantt chart of the whole queue with a real "until all done" estimate, a fullscreen wall-screen mode, and per-printer rows.
• The printer to-do list - turns your queue into the single most useful physical change to make right now, with task chips for filament, nozzle, bed type, refill and idle, optional operator assignment and a daily digest.
• Working hours and expected finish (Print Farm and up) - tell SimplyPrint which hours you're actually staffed, so finish-time estimates never assume someone clears a bed at 3am. Powers the "Finishing before shift end" count on your printers page.
• Deadlines and the queue settings - per-item deadlines are Print Farm and up (with an optional default, a required deadline, and a minimum lead time). The queue settings also let you customise your columns and reach the scheduling controls.

For the staggered-start option that spaces out simultaneous prints, see the staggered start feature.

Feature availability by plan

For a full feature comparison across all plans, visit the pricing page.

Related articles

• Adding items to the queue
• Queue groups
• The print timeline
• The printer to-do list
• Working hours and expected finish
• Scheduling and distribution
• Print queue settings
• 1-Click Print
• AutoPrint
• Queue approval
• Why a printer won't print an item
• The print queue feature page

Updated on: 24/06/2026