A network printer or a local printer that is shared by other computers can be accessed by Windows. You can connect to printers shared by Windows or any other operating systems such as Ubuntu Linux or macOS as they are shared using the same protocol, SMB/CIFS.

You need to enable Network Discovery feature on your Windows computer and to get the IP address of the remote computer to start connecting to the shared printer. The printer can be added to your Windows machine directly from File Explorer.

Steps to add network shared printer in Windows 11:

  1. Enable Network Discovery for Windows 11.

  2. Connect to computer with shared printer from Windows search bar.

  3. Right click on shared printer.
  4. Click on the Connect menu item.

  5. Wait for Windows to connect to the network printer.
  6. Click Yes on the User Access Control window to allow installation of the printer.
  7. Wait for shared printer to finish installing.