Auto-Print Emails on Android, Even With the Screen Off

There's an old Android tablet in a drawer in most small businesses. Cracked corner, three-year-old software, replaced by something newer, kept because throwing away a working tablet feels wrong.

That tablet is a print station. Plug it in next to your printer, and email that lands in your inbox comes out on paper without anyone touching anything.

Table of Contents

• Android is the better print station, and here's why
• What you need
• The setup, start to finish
• Battery saver is the one thing that breaks it
• What actually stops printing
• Android or iPad?
• What it costs
• When you want the desktop version instead

Android is the better print station, and here's why

We ship on both platforms, so this isn't brand loyalty. Android just wins this specific job.

On an iPad, the screen has to stay on. Apple suspends hidden and locked apps, full stop, so an iPad station sits there glowing all day with Auto-Lock set to Never. It works. We wrote up exactly what iPadOS blocks if you want the detail.

On Android, the screen can go to sleep and printing keeps running. The app stays the one on screen, the display goes dark, jobs keep landing on paper. A dark tablet on a counter looks like a dead tablet. That's the point.

What you need

Three things, and you probably have all three:

• An Android phone or tablet that can stay plugged in beside the printer. Retired hardware is ideal.
• A printer on the same Wi-Fi that speaks IPP. If your phone can already print to it from the share sheet, you're fine.
• An email address you can forward from. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, your platform's order notifications, whatever sends you the thing you keep printing by hand.

No PC. No server. No print driver hunt.

The setup, start to finish

1. Install ItJustPrints from Google Play on the tablet.
2. Pick your printer. Anything on the same Wi-Fi shows up in the list.
3. The app hands you a private print address that looks like print-xxxx@in.itjustprints.app.
4. Forward mail to it. All of it, or just the senders that matter, using a Gmail filter or an Outlook rule.
5. Tap Allow when Android asks about battery optimisation. This one matters, see below.

Then leave it alone. Mail arrives, the station picks it up, the printer runs. Jobs queue on our side until the station collects them, so an empty paper tray or a brief Wi-Fi drop doesn't lose anything, it just delays it.

Battery saver is the one thing that breaks it

If prints stop arriving overnight and start again the moment you unlock the tablet, this is why. Android aggressively puts apps to sleep to save battery, which is great on a phone in your pocket and useless on a device wired to the wall.

The first time you finish setup, Android asks to let the app ignore battery optimisation. Tap Allow. If you missed the prompt, the Station screen shows a "Battery saver can stop prints" card, tap that instead.

Samsung is the fussiest and can be set by hand: Settings → Battery → App battery usage → ItJustPrints → Unrestricted.

What actually stops printing

Short list, and none of it is mysterious:

• Swiping the app out of recent apps. This kills the station. Don't do it.
• Leaving another app on screen for a long stretch. Android shows an "ItJustPrints is running" notification, tap it any time and the queue catches up instantly.
• An empty tray. The queue waits. Refill and it drains.

Notice what's not on that list: locking the screen. That's the Android advantage. The full breakdown per platform lives in keep the app open.

Android or iPad?

If you have both in the drawer, use the Android one. If you only have the iPad, it's a perfectly good station, it just glows.

What it costs

$99 a month per print station, or $999 a year, with a 14-day free trial. Billing runs through Google Play, so it sits with your other app subscriptions.

One station covers one printer at one location. Two counters, two stations.

When you want the desktop version instead

If there is a computer at that location and you'd rather your mail never left it, AutoPrintEmail does the same job locally: a desktop app watches the inbox and prints on the machine itself, so email content never passes through our cloud — bar Word and Excel attachments, which its converter sends over for PDF conversion unless you turn that off.

That's the honest trade. ItJustPrints receives and renders your forwarded mail in our cloud, which is what lets it work with no computer at all. AutoPrintEmail keeps everything on your machine, and needs that machine awake.

Pick on the trade-off, not the price. And if what you're really replacing is a printer's dead email address, start with the ePrint replacement guide.

Go find the drawer tablet. It has a job now.