Bambu Authorization Control and OrcaSlicer: Where Things Stand
If you own a Bambu Lab printer and use OrcaSlicer, you have probably noticed that sending a print straight to the printer is not as simple as it used to be. That goes back to a firmware change from January 2025, and it turned into a much bigger fight this spring. Here is what happened, where things stand on November 3, 2026, and what still works.
January 2025: Authorization Control
On January 16, 2025, Bambu announced a new Authorization Control system for the X1 series, starting with firmware 01.08.03.00. With it turned on, the printer checks that commands come from official or authorized software. Starting prints over LAN or the cloud, motion, temperatures, fans, AMS settings and calibrations all need it. Printing from an SD card and status updates (like the ones Home Assistant reads) were not affected.
The big change for third-party slicers was that they could no longer use Bambu Studio’s network plug-in to control the printer. Instead, Bambu Connect, a separate app that does no slicing, would send finished files to the printer. Bambu said the change was about security, and its post says its systems had seen “peaks of up to 30 million unauthorized requests per day” along with DDoS attacks on its cloud. Bambu did not say who sent that traffic.
After a lot of pushback, Bambu posted a follow-up on January 20 that added Developer Mode for the X1, P1, A1 and A1 mini. Developer Mode leaves the MQTT channel, live stream and FTP open like before, but you have to turn it on by hand, and Bambu says it will not provide customer support for it. OrcaSlicer’s lead developer said on January 24, 2025 that OrcaSlicer would not support Bambu Connect “for the foreseeable future”.
2025: It Reaches the A and P Series
The first public X1 firmware with Authorization Control was 01.08.05.00, released March 12, 2025. The P1P and P1S got it in 01.08.02.00 and the A1 in 01.05.00.00, both on June 3, 2025. Both add Developer Mode under LAN mode, and Bambu said in January that every future printer would have Authorization Control built in.
April to May 2026: The Fork Dispute
On April 23, 2026, Polish developer Paweł Jarczak published OrcaSlicer-bambulab on GitHub. According to Tom’s Hardware and 3D Printing Industry, the fork brought back cloud printing from OrcaSlicer without Bambu Connect or Developer Mode. In late April, Bambu contacted Jarczak and asked him to take it down. The developer says Bambu told him a cease and desist letter had been prepared, and he removed the code. The letter was never published, and we found no lawsuit.
On May 7, Bambu published “Setting the record straight on Cloud Access and Community”. Bambu says the fork “pretended to be the official Bambu Studio client” when talking to its servers. It says Bambu Studio is open source under the AGPL, but “a license for code is not a pass to our cloud infrastructure,” since its cloud is a private service covered by a user agreement. Bambu says the dispute “is not about OrcaSlicer or any other legitimate forks.” The developer disagrees. His GitHub page says the code in question came from Bambu’s own public Bambu Studio source.
Gamers Nexus rehosted the fork with Jarczak’s permission and pledged $10,000 toward his legal costs, and Louis Rossmann made a similar $10,000 pledge. Then on May 18, the Software Freedom Conservancy said it had confirmed two AGPLv3 violations by Bambu: shipping Bambu Studio with a closed networking library without its source code, and pressuring Jarczak to take his fork down. The SFC says it has started a full AGPLv3 compliance investigation of Bambu’s software and firmware. It has not sued. Instead it launched a project to reverse engineer the networking library and keep the fork going. We could not find any new public statement from Bambu on the fork or the SFC claims since May 7.
What Still Works With OrcaSlicer Today
The good news is that OrcaSlicer itself is fine. The official project was never targeted, the latest stable release is v2.4.2, and it still slices for Bambu printers. Sending the print is the part that changed. On current firmware, you have three options:
- LAN Only plus Developer Mode. Turn on LAN Only mode on the printer, then Developer Mode (Bambu’s guide). OrcaSlicer can then send prints directly over your network.
- Bambu Connect. Export the sliced file from OrcaSlicer and open it in Bambu Connect. It is still in beta, runs on Windows and macOS only, and has no live camera view yet.
- SD card or USB. Copy the file to the printer’s storage and start it from the screen. Authorization Control never blocked this.
Be sure to know what Developer Mode costs you. LAN Only mode cuts the printer off from Bambu’s cloud, and the Bambu Handy wiki says Handy “does not currently support printer LAN mode”. If Handy matters to you, slicing in OrcaSlicer and sending through Bambu Connect keeps it working.
All in all, OrcaSlicer still works with every Bambu printer it has profiles for, it just takes one extra step to get the print onto the printer. The fork fight and the SFC investigation are still open, so we will update this post if Bambu, the developer or the SFC announce anything new.
Last checked November 3, 2026. Sources: Bambu Lab’s blog posts from January 16, 2025, January 20, 2025 and May 7, 2026, the Bambu Lab wiki firmware histories, OrcaSlicer on GitHub, the developer’s GitHub repository, the Software Freedom Conservancy, Gamers Nexus, Tom’s Hardware and 3D Printing Industry.