How to Connect a Canon Printer to Wi-Fi?

Audience: a home or small-office user setting up a Canon PIXMA, MAXIFY, PIXMA G-series (MegaTank) or i-SENSYS printer on a normal domestic or small-business router. Not an IT administrator rolling out a fleet.

To connect a Canon printer to Wi-Fi, use the printer's own Wireless LAN setup menu if it has a touchscreen. If it has no screen, use Canon's cableless setup through the Canon PRINT app or the ij.start.canon website, which hands your network name and password to the printer directly. Both routes need a 2.4GHz network, because nearly every Canon printer cannot use 5GHz.

That is the whole job, and on a touchscreen model it takes about two minutes. The rest of this guide covers the parts that go wrong: the band problem, screenless models, WPS, checking it actually worked, and why a Canon printer that connected fine on Monday is offline by Thursday.

First, the 2.4GHz question

Almost every Canon home printer, including nearly the entire PIXMA and MAXIFY range sold in the past decade, connects only to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band. Look at the wireless LAN line on your printer's spec sheet or in its online manual. If it reads "IEEE 802.11 b/g/n" at 2.4GHz and lists nothing else, that is a 2.4GHz-only radio. A small number of newer models (certain 2023-onward PIXMA units) added 5GHz, but unless the spec sheet explicitly says "dual band" or "5 GHz", assume 2.4GHz only. That assumption is correct far more often than not.

This matters because most current UK ISP routers (BT Smart Hub, Sky Broadband Hub, Virgin Media Hub, TalkTalk) broadcast a single network name for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and decide which one each device uses. It goes by names like Smart Connect, Intelligent WiFi or band steering. Your phone and laptop cope with it. A 2.4GHz-only printer sometimes cannot see the network at all, or it joins and then gets pushed onto a band it cannot use.

You rarely need to split the bands permanently. What works reliably:

1. Log in to your router's admin page.
2. Turn off the 5GHz radio for ten minutes.
3. Run the printer setup so it joins the 2.4GHz band by name.
4. Switch 5GHz back on.

Once the printer has locked onto the 2.4GHz band, it stays there. If your router already runs a separate name per band, just pick the one ending in something like "-2.4G" (or the one without a "-5G" suffix) during setup.

How do you get into the router settings? It is a web address, usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 typed into a browser, using the admin password printed on a sticker on the router itself. That is not the same as your Wi-Fi password, and mixing the two up is a common early mistake.

Route 1: printers with a colour touchscreen

Models such as the PIXMA TS8750, MAXIFY GX7050 and the i-SENSYS MF laser range have a full menu you navigate by tapping. You never need a computer or an app.

1. From the Home screen, tap the network icon (a small aerial or Wi-Fi symbol), or open Setup then Device settings then LAN settings.
2. Choose Wireless LAN, then Wireless LAN setup (sometimes worded "Connect to wireless router").
3. The printer scans and lists nearby networks. Tap yours.
4. Enter the network key, which is your Wi-Fi password. Watch the case, and watch for characters that look alike: lower-case L against the number 1, capital O against zero. A stray space at the start or end counts too.
5. Confirm. The Wi-Fi symbol flashes while it connects and holds steady once it is on.

If your network name is not in the list, the printer is either out of 2.4GHz range for setup or your SSID is hidden. For range, move the printer next to the router for now and move it back afterwards. For a hidden network, choose Set up manually or Directly enter and type the name yourself.

On i-SENSYS laser models the wording differs: Menu, then Network Settings, then Wireless LAN Settings, then SSID Settings, then Select Access Point.

Do you have to reinstall drivers after switching from USB to Wi-Fi? On Windows, yes: add the printer again as a network device under Settings, then Bluetooth and devices, then Printers and scanners, or run the installer from ij.start.canon and pick the wireless option. macOS usually finds it over AirPrint with no driver at all.

Route 2: screenless printers, cableless setup

This covers the PIXMA TS3550i, PIXMA TR4750i, PIXMA GX1050 and similar: a Wi-Fi button, a lamp, and little else. Canon calls the method cableless setup, or Easy Wireless Connect on some models.

Have the app or website open and ready before you touch the printer, because the printer's setup mode times out after a couple of minutes.

1. On a computer, go to ij.start.canon and enter your model number. On a phone, install Canon PRINT from the App Store or Google Play. Canon has renamed this app several times; the current inkjet one is just "Canon PRINT", and there is a separate "Canon PRINT Business" for MAXIFY and i-SENSYS.
2. Choose to set up a new printer, select wireless / Wi-Fi connection, then cableless setup.
3. When prompted, hold the printer's Wi-Fi button until the lamp flashes, then release. Some models want a sequence: Wi-Fi button, then the colour Start button, then Wi-Fi again. The app tells you which.
4. The app now connects your phone or computer straight to the printer for about 60 to 90 seconds and pushes your network name and password across. Your phone shows "no internet" during this. Do not tap "switch to mobile data" or "use a different network". Let it finish.
5. The printer joins your network, the Wi-Fi lamp goes solid, and your phone reconnects to your normal Wi-Fi on its own.

The usual failure here is the phone slipping to 5GHz or to mobile data during the handover. Before you start: turn mobile data off, turn any VPN off, and on an iPhone go to Settings, Wi-Fi, tap the "i" next to your network and turn off Private Wi-Fi Address for that network (a feature on by default since iOS 14). You can switch it back on afterwards, though leaving it off also stops the printer losing track of the phone later.

The lamp is flashing in a pattern, not connecting. A repeating flash pattern is an error signal, not progress. Print the network settings page (see below) to read the diagnostic code, or hold the Wi-Fi button and the Stop button together to cancel and start again.

Route 3: the WPS shortcut

If your router has a WPS button, this is the quickest method when it works, with no password typing at all.

On the printer, open Wireless LAN setup and choose WPS (Push button method). On a screenless model, hold the Wi-Fi button until the lamp flashes then press it again (the exact sequence is in your model's leaflet). Then, within two minutes, press and hold the WPS button on the router until its WPS light blinks. The two find each other and exchange credentials automatically.

Where it falls down:

• Some Virgin Media and BT hubs ship with WPS switched off, or with no physical button, so you enable or trigger it from the router's settings page or companion app first.
• The two-minute window is real. Start the printer first, then walk to the router.
• WPS only works on WPA2 networks. If your router is set to WPA3-only, WPS is disabled automatically.

Is WPS a security risk? The older WPS PIN method has a known weakness (the flaw the Reaver tool exploits, published in 2011) and is worth leaving disabled. The push-button method is fine for a one-off setup, and there is no need to leave WPS switched on afterwards.

Route 4: no router, or two devices that only need to talk to each other

Canon printers can create their own Wi-Fi network, which Canon calls Wireless Direct (older models say "Access Point mode"). Your phone or laptop connects to the printer directly, with no router involved.

Turn it on from LAN settings, then Wireless Direct, then set to on. The printer shows a network name (often starting "DIRECT-" followed by your model) and a password. Connect your device to that as you would any Wi-Fi network.

It earns its place in two situations: a printer in a room with no usable Wi-Fi, and a quick print from a visitor's phone without handing out your home password. The trade-off is that while your phone is on Wireless Direct it has no internet, because the printer is not a gateway. Treat it as a fallback, not a permanent setup.

Check it actually worked: the network settings printout

Do not trust the lamp alone. Print the network configuration page. It is the only way to see what the printer thinks it is connected to.

• Touchscreen models: Setup, then Device settings, then LAN settings, then Print details (or Print LAN details).
• Screenless models: with paper loaded, the usual combination is to hold the Wi-Fi button and press the Stop/Resume button (the triangle in a circle), or press the information button. It varies by model and is listed in the getting-started leaflet.

On the printout, check:

A 169.254 address means the printer tried to join but never got an address from the router, usually a MAC filter or a full DHCP pool. A signal strength in the 20s means it connected but will drop out: move the printer, or the router.

When it won't connect

One UK-specific point on that channel row: UK routers may use 2.4GHz channels 1 to 13, while US-market equipment stops at 11 (Ofcom Interface Requirement 2030 versus the FCC limit). Almost all Canon printers sold in the UK handle channels 12 and 13, but if you have an imported or US-model printer, set the router to a channel between 1 and 11 to be safe.

If none of that works, Canon's free Wi-Fi Connection Assistant for Windows and Mac (previously called IJ Network Device Setup Utility) connects to the printer over USB and rewrites its wireless settings from the computer. It is the tool to reach for when the printer has joined the wrong network and you cannot get back into its setup menu.

Why it connects, then drops, and how to make it stick

A Canon printer going offline every few days is one of the most common complaints on Canon's own support forums, and it is almost never a hardware fault. Two things cause most of it.

The IP address keeps changing. By default the router hands the printer a different address whenever the lease expires or it sleeps long enough, while the driver on your computer is still looking for the old one. The fix is a DHCP reservation: in the router's admin page, find the printer in the connected-devices list and tie its MAC address to a fixed IP. This is safer than setting a static IP on the printer itself, where one mistyped gateway or subnet leaves it unable to connect at all and needing a reset.

Power saving drops the radio. Some Canon models power down the Wi-Fi module in deep sleep and are slow to bring it back. In the printer's settings, look for "Power saving settings" or "ECO settings" and lengthen the time before sleep, or disable the option that powers down the wireless module.

Should you just use USB or Ethernet instead? If the printer sits next to the one computer that always prints to it, USB removes every networking problem at once. If it has an Ethernet port and there is a spare socket on the router or a nearby switch, a cable is rock solid and still lets every device on the network print to it. Wi-Fi is the convenient option here, not the dependable one.

Quick reference: which method for which printer