There are many threads on this on the net, yet, it took me far too long to set this. There is an answer for this, but it is not clear enough on a first read.
Do not choose the "Print to File" option at all. At first I thought choosing that as the default needs to be changed to "Print to file" would make it:
Libre Office menu --> Tools --> Options --> Libre Office --> Print --> Settings for "Print to file"
But that is the built-in printer that does not name the file, you have to write it down or paste it, that is nasty work. Instead, install a new PDF printer that is seen as a real printer and choose it once while printing, and it will stay your default, and there is no generic printer anymore since you have installed one that has replaced it.
Thus, if you touched the settings, switch back to the "Printer":
If you did not touch the settings, you do not need to do this since "Printer" is the default.
Then open a terminal and paste:
sudo apt-get install printer-driver-cups-pdf
See: How to install a "pdf printer"? - Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange
I know that this answer is there and you might say I duplicate the question, but I thought that the answer there would be outdated, and I also did not understand why I should install a PDF printer even if there is a built-in printer that works very well for my browser printouts, with automatic naming as best as you can think of. It is not clear enough that this is a problem in LibreOffice.
The main hint was at How to set Libreoffice default printer to “Print to File”:
If the above doesn’t work, then you have to set the default printer virtually via CUPS.
Since this was an answer from 2025, I tried the installation:
(base) user@admin:~$ sudo apt-get install printer-driver-cups-pdf [sudo] password for user: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: printer-driver-cups-pdf 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 64 not upgraded. Need to get 25,0 kB of archives. After this operation, 249 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://mirror.23media.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 printer-driver-cups-pdf amd64 3.0.1-6 [25,0 kB] Fetched 25,0 kB in 0s (72,5 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package printer-driver-cups-pdf. (Reading database ... 334327 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../printer-driver-cups-pdf_3.0.1-6_amd64.deb ... Unpacking printer-driver-cups-pdf (3.0.1-6) ... Setting up printer-driver-cups-pdf (3.0.1-6) ... Processing triggers for cups (2.3.1-9ubuntu1.9) ... Updating PPD files for cups-pdf ... PPD for printer PDF updated
After that, you need to choose the PDF printer just once:
And then, it will remember it as the default printer and print the PDFs with names.
