Help

Using Explayn

Highlight anything and a small bar appears: Explain, Listen (read aloud, each word lit as it is spoken) or Ask (your own question about it). Or press the key — ⌘⌃E on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+E on Windows, Ctrl+Shift+E in Chrome elsewhere. For what can’t be highlighted — a formula in a picture, a chart, a scan — frame it with ⌘⌃S (Ctrl+Alt+W on Windows).

Under every answer: Simpler, Example, Why it matters and Test me, which asks you a question about it, tells you what you got right and fills in what you missed. Stuck? I don’t know — show me gives the answer and asks the next. Rather tap than type? Settings → Test me asks → Pick from three, and each question comes with three answers to choose from. Words in another language than yours offer Translate there instead of Example — into your language, with a line on any idiom that doesn’t carry over.

Go deeper. Two questions you might ask next sit under an answer — press one to ask it. A word in the answer you don’t know either? Highlight it there and choose Explain — it is asked about in the same chat. Look the same words up again and the card says when you did, with a way back to that chat.

Words you’ve looked up keep a dotted underline when you come back to a page in Chrome; rest on one to see what Explayn said. Settings can mark them on every page, or not at all.

Your chats are kept on your own device, never uploaded: in Chrome’s side panel (the toolbar icon → Your chats, the page you’re on first), in Recent Chats in the Mac’s menu bar and its window, and under Recent in the Windows app. The last sixty are kept — Older Chats on a Mac, Show all on Windows — and a chat you mark Keep (the star) is never dropped. Settings can turn keeping them off. Keep a line of your own with any chat — Add a note in Chrome’s side panel and the iPhone/iPad app, ✎ on a Recent row on Windows, or right-click a Recent chat on a Mac. Notes are searched and exported with the chat. Moving to a new computer? Back up saves every chat as one file — Chrome’s Options (Your chats), Save ▾ in Windows’ Recent, Recent Chats on a Mac, or the foot of the iPhone/iPad app — and Restore brings it back on the same kind of device, added to what’s there — up to the newest sixty (forty on an iPhone) and every chat you keep, as always.

Your words, A to Z. Every word you’ve looked up, once each, with the first line of what Explayn said — a glossary of your own. A–Z beside the search in Chrome’s side panel, in Recent on Windows and in the iPhone/iPad app; Your Words, A to Z under Recent Chats on a Mac. Choose a word to open its chat, or save them all as one Markdown file to print or keep with your notes. A bar over the list shows how they stand: known (your last flip or test was right), still learning, and new.

Flip through your words. The quickest review there is: each word as a card, the ones most due first. Say what it means to yourself, turn it over (Space), and choose Not yet or Knew it — a word you knew comes back later than last time, one you didn’t comes back tomorrow, exactly as a Test me would steer it. No question is sent anywhere. Under A–Z in Chrome’s side panel, in Recent on Windows and in the iPhone/iPad app; on a Mac, Flip Through Your Wordsunder Recent Chats → Your Words.

Review tests you on the chat most due: it comes back a day after you had it, then three days, a week, two weeks and a month after each review — and tomorrow again if you got it wrong. After one review, Next review goes straight on to the next. In Chrome the toolbar icon offers Review a past chat whenever one is due.

Flashcards. Save every chat as cards to import into Anki — Save ▾ in Chrome’s side panel, Flashcards on Windows and on an iPhone, Export Flashcards for Anki… under Recent Chats on a Mac.

Your way: Settings → Answer length makes first answers shorter (a line or two) or fuller (with an example), Answer text size makes them larger, and About you — a few words like “first-year nursing student” — lets answers pick examples that fit you.

Keys in the card (Chrome and Windows): 1–5 choose Explain, Simpler, Example, Why it matters and Test me; ? lists the rest. The star in the card’s header keeps the chat.

YouTube: turn on captions (CC) and Explayn follows what the video says as it plays — press ⌘⌃P (Alt+Shift+P) and it explains the video so far, then takes your questions about it.

Google Docs works as any page does in Chrome: highlight words in a Doc and Explayn offers them, though it can’t see the sentence around them there.

PDFs and whole pages. Chrome’s own PDF viewer keeps highlights from extensions, so Explayn opens PDFs in its own reader — press any Explayn key on a PDF, or choose Open a PDF in Explayn from the toolbar icon for one on your computer. ⌘⌃P (Alt+Shift+P) explains a whole article or PDF, then takes your questions — and Key terms on that card lists the words a newcomer needs, each with what it means there; click a term for more about it. In the reader, Contents jumps to a chapter (or, with Explain beside it, explains just that chapter), clicking the page number takes you to any page, and the moon turns the pages dark for reading at night. On a Mac or Windows, drop a file on Explayn’s window to have it explained.

Books you can’t copy from — Kindle, Apple Books, a locked review copy. On a Mac, choose Read a Book Aloud, Page by Page… from Explayn’s menu-bar icon and drag a box round the page; on Windows, frame the page with Ctrl+Alt+W and choose Read on. Explayn reads it, presses → in that app to turn the page, and keeps going. The words are read off the screen on your own computer. Esc stops it, and so does a page that doesn’t change.

Installing and removing

Mac

Open the downloaded Explayn-mac.dmg and drag Explayn into Applications, then open it from Applications — not from the disk image or Downloads, where macOS runs it from a temporary copy. The first time, Explayn asks for Accessibility (to read what you highlight in other apps) and Screen Recording (to read an area you frame). Explayn needs macOS 13 or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Removing it: choose Quit Explayn from its menu-bar icon, then drag Explayn from Applications to the Bin. The small helper that keeps its shortcuts working removes itself within a few minutes. To take away the permissions too, remove Explayn from System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility and Screen & System Audio Recording.

Windows

Run Explayn-setup.exe. It installs for your account only, with no administrator needed. Windows may say it “protected your PC” because the installer is new: choose More info, then Run anyway. Explayn lives in the tray, by the clock; Ctrl+Alt+E explains what you highlighted, Ctrl+Alt+X asks anything, Ctrl+Alt+W explains an area of the screen, and Ctrl+Alt+R reads aloud. Windows 10 or 11 is needed.

Removing it: Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Explayn → Uninstall. Your settings are in %APPDATA%\app.lucid.desktop if you want them gone as well.

Chrome, Edge, Brave and Arc

Unzip Explayn-Chrome.zip, open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, choose Load unpacked and pick the unzipped folder. Keep the folder where it is — the browser runs Explayn from it.

Removing it: chrome://extensions → Explayn → Remove. Its settings go with it.

Keeping it on your own computer

Explayn can answer from a model running on your own machine instead of a hosted one, so nothing you read is sent anywhere. Install Ollama (or LM Studio and start its server), then pull a model — ollama pull llama3.2, and ollama pull llama3.2-vision for screenshots. Then choose it: Chrome — Options → Provider → On this machine; Mac — Settings → Explanations come from → On this Mac; Windows — Settings → Explanations come from → On this computer. Leave the model empty to use whatever you have pulled. For LM Studio, give its server, http://localhost:1234/v1, as the endpoint (Mac) or server (Windows). Chrome needs Ollama to allow the extension: OLLAMA_ORIGINS='chrome-extension://*' ollama serve; on Windows, OLLAMA_ORIGINS=http://tauri.localhost. Reading aloud with the Mac or Windows voice stays on the machine too.

Updates

The Mac and Windows apps check once a day and say when a newer Explayn is out — in the menu-bar or tray menu and in their window. Choose Install there and Explayn updates itself in place and reopens; your settings, chats and permissions stay. The Chrome extension shows a notice in its toolbar popup when it’s behind: download the new zip (Explayn-Chrome.zip), replace the folder’s contents with it, then press the reload arrow on chrome://extensions.

Something not working?

Email hello@explayn.com.au with what you pressed and what happened. Crash reports (unless you turned them off) mean it may already be known.