Application installed as snap package can't see printer

Solution 1:

It's not a bug. Snaps run in containers with separate environments which prevent applications to access all the system (as the classic applications do) for security. By default printers are not accessible, but can be enabled with:

sudo snap connect inkscape:cups-control :cups-control

That will allow printers to show in Inkscape. Change inskcape for the name of the application (for example, gimp) if needed. It happened to me with WPS Office: this was my question.

You need to restart the application to take effect.

In my personal opinion, it would be nice if during installation you could specify such permissions or that the applications could decide which permissions requires and let the user know about them (like Android applications).

Solution 2:

By default snaps are confined to the user's $HOME which can lead to some access issues. In this case it seems more a bug or current limitation of the inkscape snap that it can't access the printer.

So atm the snap can be installed with the --classic option to disable confinement.

If snap is already installed then remove

sudo snap remove inkscape

Then install with the option

sudo snap install --classic inkscape

This option will prove useful with other snaps, particularly media players.