Create quality scansĬreating a great scan requires more than just putting down a piece of paper and pressing go. Instead of relying on third-party software, Easy Scan comes straight from the source and is the official application for HP printers and scanners. HP Easy Scan works in tandem with your HP multifunctional printer and scanner to adjust scan settings and create a digital file that is as close to the original as possible.

I very very seldom print or scan so it’s not surprising that my system was out of date.HP Easy Scan is a free application for select desktop and laptop computers that allows users with HP multifunction printers and scanners to manage their incoming documents.

The reason this likely worked for my husband and not me is that he updated his printer drivers while still on Catalina after HP screwed the pooch and mistakingly revoked certificates for their printer drivers in Oct 2020.

While the printer will happily print with the Generic PCL driver (courtesy of Gutenprint) it doesn’t include the drivers for scanning. This doesn’t include the OS-level driver and without it the app can’t communicate with the scanner.

Downloading the HP Easy Scan software from the App Store.

Other things that I discovered during my attempt to fix this:

I had already done this in my troubleshooting attempt so it’s unclear if this is a prerequisite or not. You might need to download and run the “ HP Uninstaller” first. So there is a driver for the printer it’s just difficult to find. If you click through far enough you’ll arrive on their My operating system is not listed on HP Software and Driver Downloads page which routes you to the Apple website linked above. The usual problem resolution path of going to HP’s Driver Download website fails because they don’t have macOS 11 drivers for the OfficeJet J4500. Why is that so incredibly hard to figure out? Because HP’s website is an incompetent mess. The solution is to download and install the HP 5.1.1 Printer Software Update from Apple, uninstall the printer, and reinstall it. I went to rant to my husband and surprisingly his Big Sur laptop was working just fine! And while usually I’m the stubborn technologist in the relationship, he was the one who solved this one. I spent a good 30 minutes Googling, uninstalling drivers, reinstalling drivers, with zero success. I don’t use it much but imagine my consternation when I received a malware message “HPScanner.app will damage your computer” from macOS Big Sur and the scanner refusing to work.

It’s tax season here in the US and yesterday I plugged in our HP OfficeJet J4500 to scan in some documents that were mailed to us.

Hp scanner driver for mac