OwlOCR

About

OwlOCR is a Mac app for extracting text from screen regions, screenshots, images, and PDFs where copy and paste won't work. It uses Apple's Vision framework for fast on-device OCR by default, and offers an optional OCR AI engine that runs a downloaded local model as a second pass on messy screenshots, low-quality scans, unusual layouts, or dense documents. Users can copy recognized text, export searchable PDFs with an invisible text layer, scan QR codes and barcodes to open URLs, and trigger OCR via keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, Finder Quick Actions, or the command line.

The Core version is free and includes unlimited Apple Vision OCR, screen capture, drag-and-drop conversion, page-by-page OCR of multi-page documents, and export to searchable PDFs and text files. Pro, priced at $19.99/year or $49.99 for a lifetime license, adds command-line integration, batch processing from Finder, multi-region capture of up to 50 areas, post-processing rules for find/replace and smart quotes, and access to the OCR AI engine. The app states that OCR runs on the user's device and that documents are not sent to an online AI service for recognition. It requires macOS 13.3 or newer and supports Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.