Wheel Spinner — spin the wheel, pick a random winner

How a spin-the-wheel random picker works — and why it is fair

Type one entry per line — names, prizes, restaurants, chores — press SPIN and the wheel picks one. It is the online version of a prize wheel at a fair, without the wobbly axle: every slice gets exactly its share of the wheel, and the result cannot be nudged by how hard or when you click.

Is the wheel really random? Can it be rigged?

The winner is drawn with crypto.getRandomValues, the browser's cryptographically secure random generator, before the wheel starts to turn. The animation then steers to a random spot inside the winning slice. Each entry's chance is its share of the wheel, and nothing about timing, clicks, how hard you flick the wheel or earlier results changes it. The code runs on your own device, so nobody — not this site either — can influence the outcome.

You can check it yourself. Odds draws 10,000 winners with the same generator and plots how often each entry won against its expected chance. The shaded band is the normal random spread (±3 standard deviations, √(p × (1 − p) ÷ 10,000)), so a fair wheel puts almost every result inside it. With many entries an occasional result just outside the band is expected; run the test again and it moves.

How to give one entry a bigger chance (weights)

Add * and a number after an entry: Alice *3 gets a slice three times as big, and three times the chance of an entry without a weight. Decimals work too (Bonus *0.5), up to a weight of 1,000. The chance per spin is weight ÷ sum of all weights. The ready-made prize wheel shows it: Grand prize ×1, Free coffee ×3, Sticker ×6, Try again ×5 and Bonus spin ×2 add up to 17, so the grand prize has a 1 in 17 chance (5.9%) and a sticker 6 in 17 (35.3%). The odds panel works these numbers out for any wheel. Typing the same name on two lines also doubles its chance; the odds panel adds those together.

Picking several winners without repeats

Turn on Remove winner after spin. Each winner leaves the wheel when you close the winner screen or spin again, so nobody wins twice. This is how you run a raffle with several prizes, draw Secret Santa pairs or put a whole class in random order. Removed someone by mistake? ↺ Restore puts every removed entry back, and R removes the last winner by hand.

Can I use the wheel full screen?

Yes. Press F or the full-screen button and the whole wheel stage fills your screen: a big wheel, a big SPIN button and a winner name you can read from the back of the room. Press P (or the sliders button) to slide the entries and options drawer in over the wheel, so you can edit the list, load another wheel or change the colours without leaving full screen. Esc or the button leaves full screen. On browsers without the Fullscreen API, such as iPhone Safari, the wheel fills the whole browser window instead.

Wheel spinner for the classroom

Use full screen on the projector and turn on Say winner out loud, which uses the browser's built-in speech; some browsers use an online voice for this, which means the winning name goes to that browser's speech service. Keep a list per class under Wheels → My wheels and switch in one click. On a phone or tablet the layout stacks and the wheel stays as large as your screen allows.

Ready-made decision wheels

One click loads a yes/no wheel, yes/no/maybe, coin flip, dice 1–6, what to eat, truth or dare, rock paper scissors, day of the week, a letter A–Z, chores, things to do and a weighted prize wheel. A coin-flip wheel has exactly a 50% chance per side, the dice wheel 1 in 6 per number — the same odds as the real thing.

Results, tally and copying the log

Every spin is logged under Results with the time (the last 300 spins are kept). Switch to tally to see how often each entry has won, or press copy to paste the full list into an email, spreadsheet or chat — handy as a record of a giveaway. Over a handful of spins the tally will look uneven; that is what randomness looks like, and the fairness test shows how it evens out over thousands.

Saving and sharing a wheel

🔗 Share copies a link with the title, entries and colour theme packed into the link itself; whoever opens it gets the same wheel. My wheels keeps several lists in this browser. Your current list and options are remembered automatically.

Keyboard shortcuts

Space spin · F full screen · P entries drawer in full screen · Esc close the winner screen · R remove the last winner · M sound on/off. Shortcuts pause while you type in the entries box.

How many entries can it hold?

Up to 1,000. With big lists the slices get thin and labels are hidden when they no longer fit, but the draw stays just as fair. Pasting a comma-separated list splits it into one entry per line, and Dedupe removes accidental doubles. Spin time is 2.5, 5 or 9 seconds, and there are nine colour themes.

Privacy

The wheel is one self-contained page. Entries, saved wheels and results live only in this browser's local storage, and in a share link if you make one. There is no account and no server-side storage. The only exception is the optional spoken announcement mentioned above. Once the page has loaded it keeps working without a connection.

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