November 4, 2025
Hot labels, hotter takes
Reverse-engineered CUPS driver for Phomemo receipt/label printers
Hackers make cheap label printers work on Linux — sticker fans erupt
TLDR: A new reverse‑engineered driver lets cheap Phomemo label printers work on Linux via CUPS, sparking excitement and some security side‑eye. Commenters debated popularity, shared alternatives, joked about “cat printers,” and one confessed buyer’s remorse for choosing Niimbot—big win for open printing on budget hardware.
Linux tinkerers just unlocked Phomemo’s tiny thermal printers with a reverse‑engineered driver, and the comments went full sticker mania. The project lets these budget label machines talk to CUPS (the standard printing system on Unix-like systems), thanks to someone sniffing Bluetooth app traffic and wiring it into a simple setup. USB works too, though the guide mentions a touchy moment where some folks had to relax security settings to get Bluetooth behaving — cue collective side‑eye.
The crowd split into camps fast: curious newcomers asking “Are these even popular?” versus proud label nerds flexing their stacks of tape. One user lamented buying a rival Niimbot D110, sighing that if they'd known about CUPS support, they’d have gone Phomemo — an instant meme for buyer’s remorse, complete with links to the excellent niim.blue site. Meanwhile, the cat‑printer cult arrived, demanding, “Is there a driver for the cat printer?” like a sticker‑summoning spell. Not to be outdone, a dev dropped a rival link: a CUPS driver for Xiqi printers via printer-driver-funnyprint, turning the thread into a label‑printer league showdown.
Strong opinions? People love the freedom of open tools and hate proprietary apps. Drama? Mild, but spicy enough: security purists cringing at relaxed settings while pragmatists shout “just print the thing!” Humor? Peak: cat-printer jokes and “I chose the wrong tiny printer” confessions. It’s DIY vibes, sticker chaos, and maximum community energy.
Key Points
- •phomemo-tools provides a reverse-engineered CUPS backend and utilities for Phomemo thermal printers on Linux.
- •Bluetooth printing involves pairing via bluetoothctl, connecting with rfcomm, and piping phomemo-filter.py output to /dev/rfcomm0 (currently supports M02).
- •USB printing is supported; devices appear as ttyACM0/lp0 and require root or lp group access to write to /dev/usb/lp0.
- •CUPS installation and driver build steps are provided, with GUI and CLI configuration examples including PPD files for different models.
- •On Fedora, python3-pyusb is needed for USB, and SELinux may block Bluetooth sockets; setting cupsd_t to permissive is suggested as a workaround.