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To do a better job than a timer, Few needs a rough idea of what each tab is: a search results page you will never look at again is not the same as a document you are halfway through. Few works this out on your device, from each tab’s address and title, and sends nothing about your tabs anywhere. There is no switch for it, because there is nothing to switch off.

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How it tells

Few tries three things, in order, and stops at the first that knows:
1

Sites and pages it knows by name

YouTube, GitHub, Gmail, Wikipedia, Amazon, many banks and hundreds more, along with pages that give themselves away: search results, sign-in and error pages, checkouts, password and security settings. The app you’re building counts too: localhost and other local addresses are filed with code, as work in progress.
2

A list of the most-visited sites

Built into the extension: the web’s most-visited sites, each with its kind — news, shopping, video and so on.
3

A small model

For sites on neither list, a model built into Few reads the address and title and, when it’s sure enough, says what kind of site it is, how likely you are to come back to it, and whether it looks throwaway or private. Each answer is only used where it was right at least nine times in ten when we tested it on sites it had never seen.
All three run in the extension. None of them sends anything.

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What Few works out

Few only ever answers these questions; it never decides what to do. Your workflow does that, and nothing Few works out shortens a tab’s time in Bin to less than an hour.

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Time in Bin

Your workflow’s In Bin for step sets how long a tab waits before it is closed — five days by default. Few adjusts that per tab, when it goes into Bin: The popup’s Bin list shows each tab’s own closing time, and says when Few will not close one.

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How Few groups

With Smart grouping on, Few gathers your ungrouped tabs into groups, leaving your own groups untouched. There’s nothing to choose: it works in layers, each catching what the one before can’t.
1

By task

Tabs you opened from the same search become one group, named after it — Search: flights to Lisbon, holding the results page and every result you opened from it. The same goes for any page you opened three tabs or more from, named after that page. Chrome keeps track of which tab opened which, on your device.
2

By kind of site

Docs, AI, Shopping and the rest (below), worked out on your device.
3

By site, when one gets busy

When one site has four tabs or more, it gets a group of its own — GitHub rather than a crowded Code. A site Few can’t place, like your own app or an internal tool, gets its group at three.
4

By time, for the rest

Whatever’s left goes under Today or Earlier, by when you last used it.
Throwaway pages — search results, sign-in walls — are left out rather than given a group of their own, unless they’re the search a task started from. Tabs stay where they are. Once a tab is in a group it stays there while the group still fits: a task’s or a site’s group lasts until it’s down to one tab — a task stays together after you close its search — and the only move time makes is from Today to Earlier, overnight. A new group needs at least two tabs, and Few keeps to eight groups a window. Take a tab out and it stays out. Drag a tab out of one of Few’s groups, into another group, or ungroup a whole group, and Few leaves those tabs where you put them until you close them. Bin still looks after them as usual. The kinds of site, with a few of what goes in each:

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When it can’t tell

An answer is only used when it is clear. A tab Few can’t place is left filed under its site or under Today and Earlier rather than somewhere plausible and wrong, matches no kind of site in a Condition, and keeps your workflow’s own time in Bin.

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Drafting with a sentence

Two buttons in the editor, Describe it in a Condition and Describe how you work in the templates dialog, draft conditions or a whole workflow from a sentence you type. Those send the sentence — only the sentence, only when you press the button — and never a tab. Privacy has the details.