Designing labels on an iPhone, and how to print them

You can design a label on an iPhone in LabelPrint, but it will not print straight from the phone: a Mac running LabelPrint does the printing. The phone turns the label into a PDF and sends it through iCloud to the Mac, and the Mac prints it on whatever printer it has, such as a 4x6 thermal printer on a USB cable. If you do not have a Mac, this is not the right app, and the first section says what to use instead.

If you have no Mac

Most label printers sold for use with a phone come with their own app, made by the manufacturer for that printer. Brother has iPrint & Label for its wireless models, DYMO's mobile app covers its wireless printers, and the small Bluetooth printers sold online usually name an app in the box. Those apps are free, talk to the printer directly, and are the right tool when the phone is the only computer you have. Their limits are that each works with one brand, and they vary a great deal in quality.

For sheet labels, Pages on the iPhone can print to any AirPrint printer, and recent versions can merge names from a Contacts group or a Numbers spreadsheet. Avery also has templates that work in a mobile browser. Neither involves a thermal roll printer, which in most cases connects to a computer, not a phone.

How the iPhone and Mac work together

1. Install LabelPrint on both. It is one app on one App Store listing: macOS 14 or later on the Mac, iOS 17 or later on the iPhone.
2. Use the same Apple Account. Sign in to iCloud with the same Apple Account on both. There is no pairing and no password; the Mac appears in the iPhone app within a minute or so of opening LabelPrint on it.
3. Set up the printer on the Mac. The Mac is the one talking to the printer, so it needs the printer installed in macOS and a preset in LabelPrint with that printer and label size. Our thermal printer compatibility table covers which printers work on a Mac.
4. Design on the phone and send. The label goes to the Mac as a PDF and prints with the preset you choose. If the Mac is off or offline, it waits and prints when the Mac is back.

Because labels travel through iCloud, the phone does not need to be on the same Wi-Fi as the Mac. You can send a label from the warehouse floor or from another city, and it prints on the Mac at your desk. The trade-off is that both need an internet connection, and iCloud has to have room for the PDF.

What the iPhone editor can do

The iPhone uses the same designer as the Mac, rearranged for a small touch screen. The overview of what the designer does is on the label maker page. On the phone you get:

• Text with fonts, weight, italic and underline, and alignment.
• Shapes: rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses and lines, with solid, dashed or dotted strokes and black fill patterns that print cleanly on a thermal head.
• Images from your photo library, converted to black and white with a threshold you set, and croppable.
• Drawing with your finger: pencil, straight line and eraser. Handy for a signature or a hand-drawn mark.
• Symbols grouped by use: shipping and handling, warnings, recycling, food and more.
• Barcodes and QR codes: Code 128, Code 39, EAN-13, and QR with an optional logo. See barcode labels for which type to use.
• Layers and groups, to rearrange and move several elements together.
• Templates: the same 48 as on the Mac, from jar labels to asset tags.
• Numbered series and CSV merge: a series of up to 500 numbered labels, or one label per row of a CSV file from the Files app. Both are covered in numbered labels and printing from a CSV.
• Describe a label to AI.The app gives you a prompt to copy into any AI chat, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. You describe the label you want, paste the AI's answer back, and the label appears as an ordinary design you can edit.

Where the phone is the better tool, and where it is not

The phone is good for quick labels away from the desk: a shelf label while you are standing at the shelf, a box label in the garage, a fix to a template while you wait for something. Take a photo of a logo and drop it in. Send it, and it is waiting on the printer when you walk back.

It is worse for fine layout. Aligning several small elements on a 50 × 30 mm label is easier with a mouse and a large screen, and because designs sync, there is no cost to starting on the phone and finishing on the Mac. Long CSV files are also easier to check on the Mac before printing hundreds of labels.

What it costs

The app is free on both. Labels sent from the iPhone are printed by the Mac and count toward that Mac's five free labels a day. Labels with barcodes, QR codes or images, and CSV batches, need Unlimited, which is one purchase for both devices. Pricing is here. If several people print from their phones to the same office Macs, the Team plan shares designs and presets across everyone.

Not just designs

The iPhone app started as a way to send shipping label PDFs to the Mac, and it still does: a label PDF from a carrier or a marketplace can be sent from the phone and cropped and printed at 4x6 by the Mac. If that is your main job, start with printing 4x6 labels on a Mac.