Can I run PaddleOCR-VL-1.6 on a Mac with 16 GB?

Yes

Its published weights (1.92 GB) fit in the 10.7 GB a Mac with 16 GB can use, with room for ≈ 128K tokens of context.

hf download PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR-VL-1.6

Files and context on Mac with 16 GB

Each file of PaddleOCR-VL-1.6 (and of GGUF versions the site has analyzed), and how much context fits next to it, with the context cache in 16-bit or 8-bit.

PaddleOCR-VL-1.6 on other hardware

Popular models that run on Mac with 16 GB

Assumes 67% of the Mac's memory is usable (macOS's default limit for the GPU; it can be raised) and at least 4K tokens of context for one conversation, with the context cache in 16-bit unless noted. Fits leaves at least 20% of that memory for context; Tight leaves less.