Motif

About

Motif helps you learn French while reading and watching the real web — news, YouTube, podcasts, social posts, and more. Hear natural pronunciation, capture words with context, and review them later. Everything runs on your device after a one-time setup.

Hear it, save it, remember it.

WHY MOTIF

Most language tools pull you away from the page you're on. Motif works inside the tab you're already reading. Select text, press a shortcut, and hear French spoken in a natural voice — with each word highlighting as you listen. No copy-paste. No switching apps.

After setup, pronunciation, transcription, text recognition, and your saved vocabulary all run locally in Chrome. Your reading stays on your machine.

HEAR FRENCH ON ANY PAGE

• Select any French text and hear it read aloud instantly
• Words highlight in sync as you listen
• Tap any word to hear just that word or phrase
• Choose from multiple natural voices in Settings

TEXT IN AN IMAGE? NO PROBLEM

• Draw a box over text in photos, graphics, or screenshots
• Motif reads the French and speaks it back
• Useful for social posts, infographics, and pages you can't select

TRANSCRIBE WHAT YOU'RE LISTENING TO

• Transcribe French audio from the tab you're on — YouTube, podcasts, radio, and more
• Works even when captions are missing or wrong
• Pause, edit, and toggle English translation alongside the transcript
• Tap any word to hear it or save it to your library

SAVE WORDS WITH REAL CONTEXT

• Tap a word to see what it means in English
• Save it to your personal library in one gesture
• Every entry keeps the sentence and page where you found it
• Add notes and revisit source contexts anytime

YOUR PERSONAL LIBRARY

• Browse everything you've saved in a searchable list
• Switch to weekly flashcards for calm review — French on one side, English on the other
• Hear any saved word again with a tap
• Vocabulary built from what you actually read and watch, not isolated word lists

PRIVATE BY DESIGN

Motif is built for learners who want help without sending their reading habits to the cloud.

• Natural speech powered by Supertonic — processed on your device
• Live transcription powered by stt-web — processed on your device
• Text recognition powered by Tesseract — processed on your device
• English translations via Chrome's built-in Translator — on-device when available

After a one-time model download, Motif works without cloud round-trips while you read, listen, and review.

GETTING STARTED

1. Install Motif and open any page with French text
2. Select a phrase and press Option+S (Alt+S on Windows/Linux) to hear it
3. Press Option+T (Alt+T) to transcribe audio from the active tab
4. Open Motif Options to choose your voice and customize shortcuts
5. Visit Saved Library to review words you've captured

REQUIREMENTS

• Google Chrome 113 or later (WebGPU recommended for best performance)
• Network access for initial model download (~1 GB total)
• English translations require Chrome 138+ on desktop

Motif is for English speakers learning French who want pronunciation help, vocabulary capture, and transcription — right where they already read and watch.