What is the Simulator?
The Simulator is a built-in transport that accepts print jobs, renders them to PDF and HTML exactly as a real transport would, and then writes the output to disk under storage/app/print-simulator/{org}/{job}.pdf and .html. No physical printer is involved.
Where it's available
The Simulator is gated behind the PRINT_SIMULATOR_ENABLED server flag. It is enabled on the NOWAITN staging environment and disabled in production. If you're on production, the Simulator option simply won't appear in the Printers setup form — and POSTing a simulator transport is rejected server-side.
When to use it
- You want to see what a Queue chit looks like on Thermal 58mm vs Thermal 80mm vs Letter without procuring all three printers.
- You're editing a template and want to verify the rendered output before shipping.
- You're doing a QA / sales-demo run and don't want to physically print.
- You want to smoke-test a cross-app integration (e.g. Queue posting to Printing) end-to-end.
Staging setup
Staging is pre-seeded with five simulator printers — one per supported printer class:
- SIM - Thermal 80mm (default)
- SIM - Thermal 58mm
- SIM - Label 2x1
- SIM - Letter
- SIM - A4
From the Printers page, click Test Print on any of them. The job appears in Jobs with status sent. Open the job to see Preview HTML and Download PDF links — both serve the persisted artifact straight from disk.
What this does NOT test
The Simulator validates rendering and the job lifecycle. It does not validate transport-specific errors (network timeouts, device-offline responses, cutter failures). Those only surface against a real transport against real hardware.