Spin the Wheel
Spin a wheel of your own options to pick a winner, a name or what to do next.
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A spinning wheel is the most visual way to make a random choice. You type your options, one per line, and they appear as coloured slices around a wheel. Press Spin and the wheel turns fast, slows down as if friction were acting on it, and stops with one slice under the pointer at the top. Teachers use it to pick a student or a topic, streamers and shops use it for giveaways, friends use it to settle what to eat or which film to watch, and teams use it to choose who presents first or who takes the next task.
Frequently asked questions
How do I use the wheel?
Is the result really random?
Can I give some options a better chance?
How do I run a raffle with several winners?
How do I share my wheel?
How many options can the wheel hold?
Is my list saved?
What is the difference from the Random Picker?
About Spin the Wheel
The result is drawn fairly. Before the animation starts, the winner is picked with your browser's cryptographic random number generator, the same one used for encryption keys, rather than the weaker Math.random. The animation is then aimed at a random spot inside the winning slice, so the spin you watch is a faithful picture of a draw that has already been made and cannot be nudged by how hard you click. Each option has an equal chance by default. If you want some options to come up more often, add a weight to the end of a line, for example Pizza *3, and that option gets three times the chance and a slice three times as wide, so the wheel always shows the real odds.
The wheel has the extras people usually look for. Remove winner after each spin takes the chosen option off the list, which is perfect for raffles with several prizes or for drawing a speaking order. A history panel keeps the latest results with the time of each spin. You can shuffle or sort the list, pick a colour scheme, turn the ticking sound on or off, and copy a share link that stores your options in the address itself, so whoever opens the link sees the same wheel without any account or server involved.
Everything runs locally in your browser. Your list is saved on your device so it is still there next time, and nothing is uploaded. If you only need a quick number, a coin flip or a dice roll, the Random Picker is faster; when the moment itself matters, in a classroom, on a stream or at a party, a wheel that everyone can watch spin makes the decision feel fair and a lot more fun.
Wheels of Fortune: From Medieval Allegory to Classroom Name Picker
The wheel as a symbol of chance is ancient. Roman writers described Fortuna, the goddess of luck, turning a wheel that raised some people and threw others down, and medieval manuscripts and cathedral windows often show the Rota Fortunae with kings at the top and beggars at the bottom. The image was so familiar that the philosopher Boethius built a famous passage of his sixth century Consolation of Philosophy around it, and the idea that fortune turns like a wheel survives in many languages today.
Real spinning wheels became gambling devices much later. Upright prize wheels, often called big six or money wheels, were common at fairs and carnivals by the nineteenth century, and roulette, whose name means little wheel in French, took its modern form in the casinos of Europe around the same time. Game show producers later borrowed the idea for television, where a giant wheel turned by contestants proved irresistibly watchable.
The physics of a fair wheel is simple in principle but tricky in practice. A real wheel can favour certain sections if it is slightly unbalanced or if the pointer catches on pegs, and gamblers have occasionally exploited biased roulette wheels by recording thousands of results. Digital wheels avoid that problem by deciding the result with a random number generator and only then animating the spin, which is exactly how this page works.