RocketPrint Station

What it is

RocketPrint Station signs in to your account, reports every printer that computer can see, and keeps one encrypted connection open to us. Jobs arrive down that connection, and results go back up it.

• Runs as a normal desktop app with a menu-bar or tray icon.
• Needs nothing to connect in — no port forwarding and no VPN.
• Prints only jobs for the printers it reported, on the account it signed in to.
• Keeps its own record of finished jobs so a redelivered job is never printed twice.

Installing

Install it on a machine that already prints to the printers you care about, and that stays awake during your working hours. One agent covers every queue that machine can see — you do not need one per printer.

• macOS — install the .dmg, then open RocketPrint Station from Applications.
• Windows — run the .exe installer, then launch it from the Start menu.
• Linux — mark the .AppImage executable and run it.

On first launch choose Connect. Sign in through your browser and approve the matching code; the station registers itself to your organization, then reports its printers within a few seconds.

Platform support and the current signing status are on the download page.

How it authenticates

You never type a password into Station. Authorizing a computer uses the browser you already trust, and what the computer ends up holding is a credential that only works on that computer.

1. Station generates a private key on the machine and shows you a short confirmation code.
2. Your browser opens the approval page. You sign in there — on your identity provider, not in the app — and choose the account this computer should join.
3. You confirm the code shown in Station matches the one on the page, so an approval cannot be pointed at a different computer.
4. Station receives a credential bound to the key it generated, and proves it holds that key on every request. The private key never leaves the machine, and we never see it.

This means a stolen copy of the station's credential is not enough to impersonate it, and a compromised workstation never yields your password or your backend API key — neither is ever on that machine.

How printers register

On connect, and periodically afterwards, the app lists the operating system's print queues and reports them. Each queue becomes a printer with a stable ID scoped to your organization, keyed on the station and the OS queue name.

• Rename a printer and its ID stays the same — safe to store in your database.
• A printer shows as offline when the app disconnects.
• Jobs for an offline printer wait rather than fail, and print when it reconnects.

How it prints

For raw_base64, the app writes your decoded bytes straight to the print queue with no driver rendering — that is how ZPL keeps its fidelity. For pdf_base64 and text, the job goes through the station's own print system using whatever driver is installed.

It then reports the outcome: printing when the OS accepts the job, then completed or failed with the reason.

Troubleshooting

Keeping Station current

Station 1.0.5 and newer checks for updates at startup and daily, then downloads available updates in the background. Choose Check for updates from the Station menu-bar icon on Mac or tray icon on Windows to check now. When the download is ready, choose Restart and update. Station finishes active print jobs before installing and reconnects with your settings preserved. Choose Later to keep printing, or Postpone update while it waits for jobs to finish.

If you have Station 1.0.4 or older, download and install the latest version once to enable in-app updates. Keep the same Station edition when upgrading.

Multiple stations and locations

Install an agent per location, all signed in to the same organization. Every printer across every site appears in one console and one API, distinguished by printer ID and station. Adding a warehouse is an install plus a row in whatever map you keep between your locations and printer IDs.