HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125a Native macOS ARM64 Driver

This repository contains the drivers, setup scripts, and implementation guides to enable 100% native Apple Silicon (ARM64) printing and scanning for the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125a on macOS without Rosetta 2, security bypasses, or SIP modifications.

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Quick Start (Turnkey Installation)

If you trust the pre-compiled binaries included in this repository, you can set up both printing and scanning in minutes:

1. Run the Install Scripts

Open a terminal inside the cloned repository directory and execute the installation scripts as a regular user (they will automatically prompt for your administrator password when writing to system folders):

For Native Printing Setup (CUPS Driver):

chmod +x install.sh uninstall.sh
./install.sh

(To completely remove the native print driver at any point, simply run ./uninstall.sh as a regular user).

For Native Scanning Setup (Apple ICA Driver):

chmod +x install_scan.sh uninstall_scan.sh
./install_scan.sh

(To completely remove the scanner driver, run ./uninstall_scan.sh as a regular user).

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2. Connect and Use the Printer (Plug-and-Play)

Connect the printer to your Mac via USB. macOS's hardware auto-discovery daemon will match the printer's hardware ID with the registered PPD, and automatically create the print queue under System Settings > Printers & Scanners!

(The printer will appear under the Model name HP LaserJet Pro MFP m125a, hpcups 3.26.4 (str4ngemd ARM64) and is ready to print natively!)

Important

Troubleshooting Auto-Registration Issues: If the printer was connected before running ./install.sh, macOS may have registered it with an incorrect/broken driver. To fix this:

1. Unplug the USB cable.
2. Go to System Settings > Printers & Scanners, right-click on the printer, and click Remove Printer.
3. Plug the printer back in. macOS will auto-discover it and build the queue using our native driver!

Note

The username str4ngemd is included in the model name so it won't be confused for an official PPD. If you want to remove it, or write a custom name:

1. Open HP_LaserJet_Pro_MFP_M125a.ppd.
2. Replace lines 12-14 to your desire.
3. Re-run ./install.sh.

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3. Connect and Use the Scanner

1. Connect the printer/scanner to your Mac using the USB cable.
2. Open Image Capture.app (installed by default on macOS, find it in Spotlight).
3. The device HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125a (str4ngemd) will appear under the Devices section in the sidebar.
4. Select it, choose your resolution (75, 150, 300, 600, or 1200 DPI), select the output format (JPEG, PNG, PDF, TIFF), and click Scan!
5. The scan will run, and the output file will be saved directly to your chosen directory.

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How It Works (Under the Hood)

Printing (CUPS Driver)

Because the M125a uses hbpl1 (HP's flavor of PCLm raster printing), it requires HPLIP's open-source hpcups filter. We provide a pre-compiled self-contained ARM64 binary (hpcups-native) statically linked with libjpeg.a so it runs natively inside the macOS CUPS sandbox out-of-the-box.

Scanning (Apple ICA Driver)

We provide a fully integrated native macOS Image Capture (ICA) Driver for scanning. It consists of:

1. scan-go Backend: A compiled Go binary (/Library/Printers/hpcups-str4ngemd/bin/scan-go) that directly manages raw bulk USB transfers to send SOAP/XML commands, parse DIME data, and save JPEG scan outputs.
2. M125aScanner.app Driver: An Apple Image Capture (ICA) driver bundle installed at /Library/Image Capture/Devices/M125aScanner.app. It matches the M125a USB vendor/product IDs (0x03F0/0x222A) to auto-launch. When you scan from any native macOS app, this driver calls scan-go in the background and converts the outputs seamlessly.

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How to Build from Source (Advanced / Custom Build)

If you prefer to audit and compile the drivers yourself instead of using the pre-compiled binaries, follow the instructions below:

1. Compiling the Printing Driver

Follow these steps to compile hpcups-native directly from the open-source HPLIP repository:

A. Install Build Dependencies

Install Homebrew if not already installed, then fetch the compiler dependencies:

brew install jpeg cups

B. Download and Extract HPLIP Source Code

Download version 3.26.4 from HPLIP SourceForge:

tar -xzf hplip-3.26.4.tar.gz
cd hplip-3.26.4

C. Resolve Case-Insensitive Filename Collisions

Rename conflicting files in the HPLIP source codebase to prevent build failures on macOS's default case-insensitive filesystem:

mv prnt/hpcups/Utils.h prnt/hpcups/HPCupsUtils.h
mv prnt/hpcups/Utils.cpp prnt/hpcups/HPCupsUtils.cpp

D. Apply Source Patches

• Header Rename: Open prnt/hpcups/HPCupsUtils.cpp and update line 32 to include our renamed header:

  #include "HPCupsUtils.h"
  #include "utils.h"

• Non-Portable Headers: Open prnt/hpcups/genJPEGStrips.cpp and replace the Linux-specific headers (around line 31) with standard macOS headers:

  // Replace #include <malloc.h> and <memory.h> with:
  #include <stdlib.h>
  #include <string.h>

• Encap Technology Stub: Open prnt/hpcups/EncapsulatorFactory.cpp and replace its entire contents with the following minimal PCLm (hbpl1) selector to strip out unneeded targets:

  #include "CommonDefinitions.h"
  #include "EncapsulatorFactory.h"
  #include "Encapsulator.h"
  #include "Hbpl1.h"
  #include <string.h>
  
  Encapsulator *EncapsulatorFactory::GetEncapsulator (char *encap_tech)
  {
      if (encap_tech == NULL) {
          return NULL;
      }
      if (!strcmp (encap_tech, "hbpl1"))
      {
          return new Hbpl1();
      }
      return NULL;
  }

E. Build the Native Binary

Copy the build_native.sh script included in this repository to the root of the extracted HPLIP folder, make it executable, and run it:

cp ../build_native.sh ./
chmod +x build_native.sh
./build_native.sh

This links against Homebrew's static archive /opt/homebrew/lib/libjpeg.a and compiles a self-contained hpcups-native binary. You can now proceed with the installation steps in the Quick Start to register the binary and PPD!

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2. Compiling the Scanning Driver

If you wish to modify the scanning code or compile the binaries yourself from source, run the installer with the build argument:

./install_scan.sh build

Note

Compiling from source requires Go (for compiling scan-go) and Xcode (for compiling the M125aScanner ICA app wrapper) to be installed.

During installation, the script copies/compiles the binaries, signs the components locally using macOS's built-in ad-hoc codesigning (codesign -s -), clears quarantine attributes, and registers them inside /Library. Since macOS performs signing locally, this does not require internet access or developer certificates.

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3. Low-level Command Line Scan (Optional / Debugging)

If you wish to trigger a scan manually via the command line without the ICA GUI app:

/Library/Printers/hpcups-str4ngemd/bin/scan-go -r 300 -m Color -o output.jpg

Arguments:

• -r: Resolution in DPI (75, 150, 300, 600, 1200).
• -m: Color Mode (Color, Gray, Mono).
• -o: Output file path.