How to use it
- Type or paste your names in the box, one per line. The wheel updates as you type.
- Press Spin, tap the wheel or hit the Space bar.
- When the wheel stops, the winner pops up. Close it, remove the name so it can’t come up again, or spin again right away.
- Want to reuse the list? Open Saved lists and give it a name. To send the same wheel to someone else, press Share.
What a name picker wheel is good for
A random name picker wheel takes the awkwardness out of choosing. Instead of you deciding who goes first, who answers the next question or who takes home the prize, the wheel does it in front of everyone. People accept the result more easily when they can watch it happen, and the few seconds of spinning build a bit of suspense that makes even a routine choice fun.
It works for almost anything that needs one name out of many: calling on students, picking a presenter for a meeting, choosing who buys coffee, settling where to eat, deciding the order of turns in a game or drawing a raffle winner at a party.
Ideas for teachers
Teachers are the heaviest users of name wheels, and for good reason. Cold-calling with a wheel feels fair to students because it plainly is, and it keeps everyone paying attention since anyone could be next. A few ways to use it in class:
- Save one list per class (for example “Period 3” or “Class 4B”) so you never have to type the roster twice.
- Turn on automatic removal to make sure every student gets a turn before anyone is picked again. Load the list again when you want to start over.
- Go full screen on the projector so the whole room can see the spin.
- Put topics, questions or vocabulary words on the wheel instead of names for quick review games.
Giveaways and raffles
For a social media giveaway, paste the list of entrants (usernames work fine) and spin once per prize. Because the wheel keeps a list of results with the time of each spin, you can take a screenshot as a simple record for your followers. If each person should have only one entry, make sure duplicates are removed before you spin. Otherwise, someone who appears twice has twice the chance.
How we keep every spin fair
Plenty of online wheels simply let the animation run and read off wherever it happens to stop. That can be subtly biased by frame rates, easing curves or rounding. This wheel works the other way around. First, the winner is chosen with the browser’s cryptographically secure random generator, using a method that avoids the small bias a naive calculation would introduce. Then the animation is calculated to finish inside that winner’s slice, at a random point that is never right on a border, so there is no doubt about where the pointer landed.
We test this. An automated check spins 100,000 times over ten names and confirms each one comes up close to 10% of the time. Another check confirms the wheel always stops on the chosen slice, with anywhere from 2 to 500 names.
Handy tricks
- Shuffle mixes the order of the list, and Sort A–Z puts it in alphabetical order. Neither changes anyone’s odds.
- Share creates a link with the whole list built in. Whoever opens it sees exactly the same wheel, which is useful for co-teachers or co-hosts.
- Emojis and accented names are fine. Try “🍕 Pizza” and “🌮 Tacos” for the next team lunch.
- The spin length is adjustable under Options, from a quick 2 seconds to a dramatic 20.
Frequently asked questions
Is the wheel really random?
Yes. The moment you press Spin, the winner is drawn with your browser’s cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues), the same kind of randomness used for security keys, not the weaker Math.random(). Only then does the animation start, and it is calculated to slow down and stop inside that name’s slice. When you click, how hard you click and how long the spin takes have no effect on who wins. Every line on the list has exactly the same chance.
How do I pick names without repeats?
When a winner comes up, press “Remove from list”. If you are going through a whole class or drawing several prizes, turn on “Remove the winner from the list automatically” under Options and every winner will drop off the wheel as soon as you close the result.
How many names can I put on the wheel?
Up to 1,000 entries. The wheel stays smooth and the text shrinks to fit. With more than a couple of hundred names the labels become too small to read on the wheel itself, but the winner is always shown in large type when it stops.
Can I give someone more chances to win?
Yes. Add their name on more than one line. Each line is one slice of the wheel, so a name that appears three times is three times as likely to be picked. Nothing is removed automatically unless you ask for it.
Are my names uploaded or stored anywhere?
No. The wheel runs entirely in your browser and the names never reach our server. Saved lists live in your browser’s storage on this device only. When you share a wheel, the list travels inside the link itself, after the # sign, a part of the address that browsers do not send to the server.
Can I use it on a projector or without internet?
Yes. Press the full-screen button to show the wheel large on a classroom screen or TV. After the page has loaded once, it keeps working if the Wi-Fi drops, because nothing depends on an online service.