macOS 27 Broke My Brother Printer. An Open-Source Driver Fixed It for Good

The macOS 27 Golden Gate update went smoothly. Then I tried to print a document.

Removing the printer and adding it back failed as well, with the same message:

“The printer software is not compatible with this device” tells you nothing. The CUPS log is more useful:

tail -60 /var/log/cups/error_log

execv of /Library/Printers/Brother/Filter/rastertobrother1210.bundle/Contents/MacOS/rastertobrother1210
  failed. err:86, Bad CPU type in executable
STATE: +com.apple.badarch-error

The cause

#

The printer is a Brother HL-1210W, a cheap host-based laser. It doesn’t speak PCL, PostScript or AirPrint, so macOS can’t use a generic driver for it. The Mac has to render every page into Brother’s own format, and Brother’s filter does that step.

That filter is an Intel binary from 2019:

lipo -archs /Library/Printers/Brother/Filter/rastertobrother1210.bundle/Contents/MacOS/rastertobrother1210
# x86_64

On Apple Silicon it has always run under Rosetta. After the update, Rosetta was gone:

arch -x86_64 /usr/bin/true
# arch: posix_spawnp: /usr/bin/true: Bad CPU type in executable

Quick fix: reinstall Rosetta

#

sudo softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

Then add the printer again. It printed.

That only lasts as long as Rosetta does. Golden Gate is the last macOS with full Rosetta 2 support, so I went looking for a native driver.

Brother has nothing newer

#

The HL-1210W download page lists macOS up to 26.x. The package it offers, Brother_PrinterDrivers_MonochromeLaser 1.5.0, is the one I already had. Inside, the filter is the same May 2019 x86_64 binary.

brlaser

#

brlaser is an open-source CUPS driver for Brother lasers that don’t speak a standard printer language. The original repo hasn’t moved since 2023. The maintained fork, Owl-Maintain/brlaser, is active, and its README lists the HL-1210W series by name.

Linux distros ship it as a package. There’s nothing for macOS: no Homebrew formula and no binary release, only source. macOS already has what the build needs, though: the CUPS headers come with the Command Line Tools, and ppdc (which generates the printer description file, the PPD) is in /usr/bin. The only missing piece is cmake.

Supported printers

#

The HL-1210W is only one of them. This guide works the same for every monochrome laser on this list, copied from the brlaser v6.2.8 README. Colour lasers and inkjets will not work.

Skip the build: precompiled download

#

I host a precompiled package here on mastori.dev: brlaser-6.2.8-macos-universal.tar.gz (100 KB, SHA-256).

It contains a universal binary that runs on Apple Silicon and Intel with macOS 11 or later. Inside are the filter, a PPD for every model in brlaser’s driver file (102), install.sh / uninstall.sh, and the full brlaser source with its GPL licence.

shasum -a 256 brlaser-6.2.8-macos-universal.tar.gz
# 2a5e797366a3dfbd7282b02bd9289b368c64e12a5c830c1060216a8fc7eb590d
tar xzf brlaser-6.2.8-macos-universal.tar.gz
cd brlaser-6.2.8-macos-universal
sudo ./install.sh

Then add the printer in System Settings > Printers & Scanners. Under Use > Select Software, pick “your model, using Owl-Maintain/brlaser v6.2.8”.

Building it

#

brew install cmake

curl -LO https://github.com/Owl-Maintain/brlaser/archive/refs/tags/v6.2.8.tar.gz
shasum -a 256 v6.2.8.tar.gz   # compare with the .sha256 on the release page
tar xzf v6.2.8.tar.gz && cd brlaser-6.2.8

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
(cd build && ctest)           # 4/4 passed

lipo -archs build/rastertobrlaser
# arm64

The filter links only against system libraries (libcups, libc++, libSystem).

Generate the PPDs. The HL-1210W one is br1210.ppd:

cd build && mkdir ppd && ppdc -d ppd brlaser.drv

For another model, find its PPD by name and use that file in place of br1210.ppd below:

grep -l 'ModelName: "Brother HL-L2300D' ppd/*.ppd
# ppd/brl2300d.ppd

Installing it

#

cmake --install would put the filter in /usr/libexec/cups/filter. On macOS that folder is protected by System Integrity Protection, so you can’t write to it. The filter goes under /Library/Printers instead, like Brother’s own, and the PPD points at it by absolute path:

sed -i '' 's#33 rastertobrlaser"#33 /Library/Printers/brlaser/filter/rastertobrlaser"#' ppd/br1210.ppd

sudo install -d -o root -g wheel -m 755 /Library/Printers/brlaser/filter
sudo install -o root -g wheel -m 755 rastertobrlaser /Library/Printers/brlaser/filter/
sudo install -o root -g wheel -m 644 ppd/br1210.ppd \
  "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Brother HL-1210W brlaser.ppd"

sudo lpadmin -p printer_home_brlaser -E -v ipp://printer.home/ \
  -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Brother HL-1210W brlaser.ppd" \
  -D "printer.home (brlaser)" -L Home

The filter must be owned by root:wheel, or CUPS refuses to run it. lpadmin warns that “printer drivers are deprecated”. CUPS prints that for every PPD-based printer, Brother’s included.

Result

#

The test page printed fine. The printer now runs on a native arm64 filter, so the next macOS release can drop Rosetta without taking it down.

If you have an older printer on an Apple Silicon Mac, check its filters now, before Rosetta goes away. Anything that shows only x86_64 depends on Rosetta:

find /Library/Printers -type f -perm +111 -ipath '*/filter/*' | while read -r f; do
  printf '%-28s %s\n' "$(basename "$f")" "$(lipo -archs "$f" 2>/dev/null)"
done | sort

commandtobrother             x86_64
rastertobrlaser              arm64
rastertobrother1210          x86_64
...