Printing Royal Mail and Click & Drop labels on a 4×6 thermal printer

If you send parcels through Royal Mail Click & Drop, start with its label settings. Royal Mail’s help pages describe a choice of label formats: A4, 6×4 and 4×3. The 6×4 and 4×3 sizes are meant for thermal and label printers.

One thing to watch for: Click & Drop can print the label and despatch note together on one page, and that combined layout is A4 only. To get 6×4 labels you need to print the label separately. Royal Mail’s help explains the exact settings, and they’re the best place to check, since the screens change from time to time.

Customs documents can also be printed at 6×4 or A4, according to the same help pages.

If you buy postage on Royal Mail’s website for the odd parcel, you can usually either print the label yourself or get a QR code instead. With a QR code, you take the parcel to a Post Office or a Royal Mail customer service point and the label is printed there, so you don’t need a printer at all.

If you choose to print it yourself, the label normally comes as a PDF you can save to your phone.

There are plenty of times a 6×4 setting isn’t in your hands:

• the label was bought through a marketplace or another service, and only downloads as an A4 PDF
• someone else made the label and emailed it to you
• you’re away from your computer and the label is already downloaded on your phone
• the page includes a despatch note or instructions alongside the label

In these cases, cropping the label to 4×6 on your iPhone is quicker than printing on A4 and cutting it out.

1. Save the label PDF to the Files app. From an email, open the attachment and use the share button. From a website, use the share option when the PDF opens.
2. Open Label Fixer and import the label from Files, or choose a screenshot or photo from Photos.
3. If the PDF has more than one page, pick the page with the label on it.
4. Label Fixer finds the label and crops it to a portrait 4×6 inch PDF. Check the preview: the address, barcode and any QR code should all be inside the crop.
5. If the crop has picked up too much, such as printed instructions beside the label, tap Edit Label. Move or resize the crop so it sits around the label, and rotate it if the label is sideways.
6. Share the finished PDF to your printer’s own app, or save it to Files, send it by Mail or AirDrop it to a computer that’s connected to the printer.

Open the 4×6 PDF in your printer’s app, or print it from a computer.

• Choose 4×6 inch (sometimes listed as 6×4, or 100 × 150 mm) as the paper or label size in your printer’s app.
• Print at actual size or 100%. Avoid “fit” or “scale” options unless your printer’s instructions say otherwise.
• Do one test print when you set up a new printer or a new roll, and check the barcode is sharp, complete and not cut off at the edges.

Label Fixer crops the label rather than squashing the whole page, and keeps PDF content vector-sharp where it can. Even so, because Royal Mail advises against resizing, always look over the first print from a new label source: the barcode should be sharp, complete and not stretched.

Finished labels stay in Label Fixer’s History on your device. If a print jams or a label gets damaged before it goes on the parcel, reopen it and share it again. Please don’t reuse a postage label on a second parcel, though: each label is for one item.