Several printers
Alabaster keeps a list of printers and switches between them from the header. One connection is live at a time.
Run it off-printer
With more than one machine, serve Alabaster from a NAS, a spare box, or a container rather than from one printer's Pi. No printer depends on another's Pi being on, and the interface stays up when any one of them is off. See Installation.
Adding one
Settings → Printers → Add a printer.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Address | printer.local:7125, an HTTP address, or a full ws:// address. |
| Name | Optional. Leave it blank and Alabaster shows the name the printer reports for itself, or its address if it reports none. |
| Dashboard | Start blank, or copy the dashboard from a printer you have already set up. |
Copying a dashboard suits a second machine of the same model. It brings the layout, the modules, and their configuration, including temperature presets, chosen macros, and step sizes. You set them up once.
Switching
The printer menu is in the header, on every page. Picking one disconnects the current printer and connects the new one.
The page does not reload. Modules dim, then fill with the new machine's data.
Seeing them all at once
With two or more printers saved, the Farm page appears in the sidebar: every machine side by side, live, with the controls for whichever one needs attention. Switching stays where it is: the menu is one click from every page. The Farm page is somewhere you go.
If you keep several printers but work on one at a time, turn Show the Farm page off on this card and the sidebar entry goes away.
What follows a printer, and what does not
Alabaster separates two kinds of settings.
Per printer: the dashboard, its modules and their configuration, macro selections, temperature presets, step sizes, bed-mesh thresholds, and maintenance intervals. A printer with a different bed, a different hot end, and different macros gets its own settings.
Shared across every printer: language, time and date format, theme pack, light or dark mode, typeface, text weight, and confirmation settings. These settings belong to you, not to a machine.
Identity, not address
Alabaster keys per-printer settings to the printer's own identity, not to the address you reach it at.
A hostname, an IP address, and a tunnel can all reach the same printer. Keyed to the address, each would appear as a separate printer with an empty dashboard. Keyed to identity, they stay one printer with the dashboard you built for it.
This means you can:
- Switch from
printer.localto192.168.1.42without losing anything. - Move the printer to a new hostname and keep its dashboard.
- Reach the same printer from home and from the workshop and get the same interface.
Renaming and removing
Both are on the printer's row in Settings → Printers.
Removing a printer takes it out of the list. It does not delete what you configured for it: add the same printer back and its dashboard, presets, and intervals return.
Where it is all stored
Alabaster stores this in your browser's local storage, on the device you are using.
As a result, another browser or another device starts fresh unless you turn on sync.
Sync settings and layout to this printer, under Settings → Backup and sync, stores your settings and that printer's dashboard in the printer's own Moonraker database. A phone and a workshop tablet then see the same setup. It is off by default; you switch it on per printer.
The printer list itself never syncs
Your list of printers stays in the browser, even with sync on. The list decides which printer's database to read, so a printer cannot store the answer to how it is found. The list is also the one setting that is per-device: a phone on mobile data and a workshop tablet on the LAN may need different addresses for the same machine.