Spinner wheel — spin to pick a random name or option

How to use the spinner wheel

1. Type or paste your choices into Options, one per line. Blank lines are ignored.
2. If you want a new winner each round, tick Remove the winner after each spin.
3. Press Spin the wheel. The wheel slows down over a few seconds and stops with the winner under the pointer at the top.
4. The winner appears under the wheel. Spin again for another draw, or edit the list first.

What it does and when to use it

The wheel turns a list into a visible, shared draw. It suits classroom questions (“who answers next?”), choosing a game or a place to eat, picking a raffle winner on a stream, or settling whose turn it is to do the dishes. Everyone can see what is on the wheel before it turns, and everyone watches it stop, which makes the result easier to accept than a name that just appears.

If you only need the answer and no show, the random picker is quicker. To split a group into teams rather than pick one person, use the random team generator.

How it works

• Each non-empty line becomes one slice of the wheel. Leading and trailing spaces are trimmed.
• When you press the button, the tool picks one slice using crypto.getRandomValues, with rejection sampling so no slice is even slightly favoured.
• Only then does the animation run. The wheel eases to a stop inside the chosen slice. The spin length varies a little each time, but that is cosmetic; it does not affect who wins.
• The chance of an option is its number of slices divided by the total number of slices.
• If your device is set to reduce motion, the wheel lands straight away without the spin or the confetti.

Worked examples

These figures come from the tool’s own calculation of each option’s share.

A dinner vote with one favourite listed twice. Options: Pizza, Pizza, Sushi, Tacos. The wheel has 4 segments. Pizza holds 2 of them, a 50% chance, with Sushi and Tacos at 25% each. Listing a name twice doubled its share.

A class of 12. The sample list has 12 names, one line each, so every student has a 1 in 12 chance, about 8.33%. Tick “Remove the winner” and the second spin is 1 in 11, then 1 in 10, and so on.

Limits and tips

• Watch for accidental duplicates. A name pasted twice gets twice the chance. Count the lines before you spin for real.
• Show the wheel first. For a giveaway, let people see the full list, spin once, and accept the result. Spinning again until you like the answer defeats the point.
• You need at least two options. With one line the tool asks you to add another.
• Long labels are shortened on the slices to fit. The full text still appears in the result.
• For numbers rather than names, the random number generator is a better fit.