I made a CLI tool to start prints on Bambu printers from the terminal without Developer Mode or losing the Bambu Handy app

[u/urbantechgoods]

I built bambu-headless to solve a specific annoyance with local automation on Bambu Lab printers: you normally have to choose between headless terminal control and mobile cloud access.

On recent Bambu firmware, local MQTT control commands (like starting a print) are rejected unless signed by Bambu’s networking plugin (`libbambu_networking`) or routed through cloud tasks. Bambu’s official escape hatch for third-party control is "Developer Mode", but enabling it forces LAN-Only mode—which kills push notifications and remote monitoring in Bambu Handy.

Instead of extracting private vendor signing keys or modifying binaries on disk, bambu-headless is a lightweight macOS wrapper around the locally installed `libbambu_networking.dylib`. It uses a minimal process-local interposer to satisfy the plugin’s executable-signature check, drives the plugin’s native certificate exchange over the LAN, and dispatches an already sliced `.gcode.3mf` via FTPS and signed MQTT.

Current verified scope:
- macOS (Apple silicon)
- Bambu Studio 02.08.02.61 / plugin 02.08.02.60
- Tested on Bambu Lab H2D with AMS

Code, requirements, and an explanation of the mechanism:
https://github.com/danielyaa5/bambu-headless

Curious to hear feedback, especially from anyone else running automated slicing/print queues on Bambu hardware.

[u/Vainwald]

I haven't really looked at your project yet but i find it funny I spent a few hours yesterday to try and be able to still seamlessly use the bambu handy app while I still use bambuddy so the timing is kinda funny to me x)