Random wheel spinner

A random picker is most helpful when the eligible choices are known and nobody should have to make the final call. It can choose a classroom prompt, decide a presentation order, assign a routine task, or break a low-stakes tie.

Seeing the draw matters as much as the result. When a group watches the same wheel slow down and land, nobody has to trust that a name was quietly pulled from a hat or a spreadsheet out of view. That shared moment is why teachers, meeting hosts and stream creators use a wheel instead of privately asking a computer for a number.

The important part is the list. Review it before the draw so every eligible option appears once, spelling differences have not created duplicates, and any weighting is visible to the people involved. The wheel provides the random selection; it cannot decide whether the input is fair.

Type or paste your options into the Entries box, one per line. If your names are in a spreadsheet, copy the whole column and paste it: each cell lands on its own line. Blank lines are ignored, so you do not need to tidy up spacing by hand, and the counter next to the list shows how many entries the wheel will actually use.

Shuffle mixes the order of the list, which also rearranges the slices on the wheel. Sort puts entries in alphabetical order, which is the fastest way to spot problems before a draw: a name pasted twice, or the same person spelled two ways, such as Katie and Katy, ends up on neighboring lines where it is easy to notice.

Not sure what to put on the wheel? The template catalogue has 76 ready-made lists across six categories (Fun & Games, Food & Drink, Education, Lifestyle, Work & Productivity, and Miscellaneous), including a Random Letter wheel, a Roll a D20 wheel, Truth or Dare and a What to Eat? wheel. Load one, edit it to suit your group, and spin.

The Recent results panel keeps the last ten outcomes on this device. It is handy for tracking who has already answered during a lesson or which challenges have come up during a game night. Clear it whenever you start a new session.

When you press Spin, the page requests a value from the Web Crypto random-number generator available in modern browsers. It maps that value across the entries according to their weights, selects the outcome, and only then calculates where the animation should stop.

Because the outcome is fixed before the wheel moves, the presentation has no influence on who wins. A 2-second spin and a 15-second spin are equally fair, and turning sounds, confetti or slow-spin mode on or off changes the show, not the odds. Even the exact point inside the winning slice where the pointer stops is chosen at random, so the landing position does not hint at anything.

Every ordinary entry has weight 1. To use a deliberate weight, write a vertical bar and a whole number after the label, such as Prize A | 3. That entry receives three shares of the probability and a proportionally larger slice. Weights are rounded to whole numbers between 1 and 1000, so a weight of 0 does not remove an entry; delete the line instead. Do not use weights when every participant is supposed to have one equal chance.

With equal entries the math is simple: each of N entries has a 1-in-N chance on every spin. Eight options means 12.5 percent each; a class of 30 means about 3.3 percent each. That chance does not change from one spin to the next, so a name that was just picked is exactly as likely to come up again as any other name, unless you remove it.

This is why repeats surprise people more than they should. Picture a class of 25 and ten spins with nobody removed. The chance that all ten spins land on different students is only about 12 percent, which means there is roughly an 88 percent chance that at least one student is picked twice. It is the same effect behind the well-known birthday problem. If repeats would feel unfair, turn on automatic removal so each person can be chosen only once until you restore the list.

Weights shift the odds in direct proportion to their numbers. Suppose five people each bought one raffle ticket and Priya bought three, so you enter her as Priya | 3. The total weight is 8, which gives Priya a 3-in-8 (37.5 percent) chance and everyone else a 1-in-8 (12.5 percent) chance. Writing the same line twice has a similar effect to a weight of 2, because each line is its own entry, so check for accidental duplicates before an equal-chance draw.

The same tool serves very different settings. What changes from one use to the next is how you prepare the list and which settings you switch on.

For personal decisions, a wheel can also act as a gut check. If the result lands and you feel relieved, that is useful information. If you immediately want to spin again, you may already prefer the other option. Either way, you stay in charge of the final choice.

Open Customize to change how the wheel looks and behaves. Settings are saved on this device and included when a wheel is shared, so the person who opens a shared wheel sees the same title, theme and timing that you set up.

Spin time can be set anywhere from 2 to 15 seconds. Short spins keep a classroom routine moving; longer spins and the Spin slowly option build suspense for a giveaway or a game-show moment. Sound volume controls both the tick as the pointer passes each segment and the chime that plays when a winner is announced.

For a casual choice, entering the options and spinning is enough. A classroom draw, community giveaway, or public selection benefits from a little more preparation. Explain who is eligible, show the final list, disclose any weights, and decide in advance whether a winner remains eligible for later rounds.

Trust comes from transparency more than technology. Announce the time of the draw in advance, show the entry list on screen before spinning, and keep the whole spin in view, ideally recorded, so anyone who missed it can watch it later. If you remove ineligible entries, say why before the draw rather than after.

Social media giveaways carry extra obligations. Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok publish their own promotion rules, and many countries regulate prize draws. Read the current platform terms and local rules before you announce a giveaway; the wheel handles the random choice, not legal compliance.

Your entries, settings and recent results are stored in local browser storage rather than an account on our server. Clearing site data removes them. Other people who use the same browser profile may be able to see saved entries, so avoid entering confidential, medical, financial, or other sensitive information.

A share link includes the wheel data needed to recreate the setup. Anyone with that link may be able to read those entries. Review the link contents and the recipient list before sharing it.

The wheel is good when an audience should see the choices and the suspense of the draw. A simpler tool is often faster when the input has a different shape: a range of numbers, a whole list that needs reordering, or a group that needs splitting into teams.

This tool is intended for everyday decisions, teaching activities, games, and informal draws. It does not verify identities, ticket purchases, eligibility, or whether the list was changed before a spin. It also does not produce a certified audit trail.

Randomness cannot make an unsafe or high-stakes choice appropriate. Do not use the result as medical, legal, financial, hiring, admissions, or emergency advice. When a decision affects someone’s rights or access to an essential service, use a documented process with suitable human review.