Fixing Canon PIXMA TS302 Paper Mismatch Alarm

This is a silly blog post for me to write, but I thought I would, in case anyone else is having a problem with their Canon TS302 printer blinking a yellow light and refusing to print when sent a print job. I kept running into this issue, and could “fix” it by hitting the resume button (the button right below the power button).

But the next time I’d try to print, it would happen again, so I’d have to physically be near the printer. What’s the point of wireless printing, then? 🤔

DISCLAIMER: Only do this if you know that the paper you’ve loaded is the right size and orientation for your printing needs. I am not responsible if you loaded the wrong paper and your printer prints incorrectly.

Anyway, I don’t know why the TS302 would stop printing when my print settings and the loaded paper are both set to US letter-sized paper, in portrait orientation. Since there is a setting for throwing this “paper mismatch” alarm, and it is defaulted to on, I had to figure out a way to turn it off. There are two settings you have to change:

  1. When printing from a wireless device (PictBridge, smartphone, or tablet), you can turn off this alarm by holding down the resume button while watching the yellow light flash, and let go of the button once the light has flashed 10 times. You can turn the alarm back on by holding down the resume button and letting go after the light has flashed 9 times.

  2. To turn off this alarm for printing from Windows, you have to open the Canon IJ Printer Assistant Tool and deselect the printer mismatch alarm option in Custom Settings:

There is a different set of instructions for changing this setting for Mac OS.

Once I turned these alarms off, I was able to print wirelessly without any problem. It was super annoying to figure out this solution, so hopefully this helps others with the same issue. It doesn’t answer the question of why the printer erroneously “detects” a paper mismatch in the first place, but 🤷‍♀️