How to remove HP printer driver 'malware' from Mac

Some users of HP printers are reporting error messages like this

Your Mac does not have malware, it's just got printer drivers that HP mistakenly asked Apple to block. Here's how to work around the problem.

Hewlett Packard has now explained the recent spate of Mac printer problems that saw users being warned of "malware" — but it hasn't yet solved it. While HP and Apple are reportedly working together to resolve the issue, users are still being prompted with warnings saying it "will damage your computer."

"We unintentionally revoked credentials on some older versions of Mac drivers," said a HP spokesperson. "This caused a temporary disruption for those customers and we are working with Apple to restore the drivers. In the meantime, we recommend users experiencing this problem to uninstall the HP driver and use the native AirPrint driver to print to their printer."

As previously reported, AirPrint is the answer if you need to actually print anything out. To get rid of the repeating error message, though, you may still need to take certain steps.

How to remove the HP printer driver

Go to System Preferences
Click on Printers & Scanners
Choose your HP printer from the Printers list on the left
Click the minus sign at bottom left
In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Printers/hp
Drag the printer driver to the trash
Go back to System Preferences
Click on Printers & Scanners if it doesn't open at that
Click the plus sign at bottom left and re-add the printer

To go the ~/Library/Printers/hp folder, go to the Finder and choose Go, Go to folder... from the menus. Or press Command-Shift-G.

Remove the old printer driver and then add your printer again

This will clearly delete the printer driver, but what it then does is force your Mac to download a new copy. Once you've re-added the printer, it will be using the new, updated driver and should work correctly.

If you still have problems

These steps should fix the issue because HP has effectively undone its mistake. According to The Eclectic Light Company, the problem was that what HP asked Apple to do was revoke its security certificate for the file "HPDeviceMonitoring.framework." In theory, then, this can just be un-revoked.

However, The Eclectic Light Company says that at time of writing, users are still reporting what appear to be related problems. If you're in that situation, there currently seems no better alternative than contacting HP support.

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