Spin the Wheel — Random Name Picker

How this wheel of names works

This spinner is a digital version of the classic prize wheel: a circle divided into equal slices, one per entry, with a pointer at the top. You type or paste your entries into the box (one per line), the wheel redraws instantly with a distinct color per slice, and a click on Spin the wheel starts a multi-second spin that eases to a stop on the winner. A confetti burst and a winner pop-up make the reveal obvious even on a projector or a shared screen.

Under the hood the process is deliberately simple and honest: when you click Spin, the browser picks one entry uniformly at random — with n entries, each has exactly a 1 / n probability. The wheel then rotates at least five full turns and lands so that the pre-selected winner sits under the pointer. The animation is presentation, not physics theater: slowing down near a slice does not change anyone’s odds, and no slice is secretly bigger than another.

Worked examples

Equal odds. Put 8 names on the wheel and each one has a 12.5% chance per spin (1 in 8). Over, say, 100 spins you would expect roughly 12–13 wins each, but streaks are completely normal in genuine randomness — the same name winning twice in a row happens 1 time in 8 for any given pair of consecutive spins, so back-to-back repeats are more common than most people expect. (Only a specific, pre-chosen name winning both of two given spins is a rarer 1-in-64 event.)

Weighted entries. Suppose your team of 9 has one person who skipped the last coffee run. Add everyone once and that person a second time: 10 lines total, so they carry a 20% chance while everyone else has 10%. Because weighting is done with visible duplicate slices, the whole group can verify the setup at a glance.

Multiple winners. Drawing 3 prize winners from 12 raffle entries? Switch on elimination mode. The first spin is 1 in 12 for everyone; the winner is removed, making the second spin 1 in 11, and the third 1 in 10. No one can win twice, which is exactly how a physical raffle drum with removed tickets behaves.

What people use the spinner for

• Random name picker — choosing who goes first, who presents, who answers.
• Raffle and giveaway draws — transparent winner selection you can screen-share.
• Classroom participation — teachers cold-calling fairly without a popsicle-stick cup.
• Yes or no decisions — a coin flip with more drama.
• Icebreakers, order of play in board games, chore assignment, restaurant roulette, prize booths at events.

Shareable wheels, private by design

Your wheel lives entirely in your browser. Entries and the title are saved to local storage so the wheel is still there tomorrow, and they are also encoded into the page URL (the fragment after #, which browsers do not send to servers). That means the Copy share link button gives you a complete, self-contained wheel you can bookmark, send to a colleague, or keep one per classroom period — with zero accounts and zero server storage. If you clear the entries or open a shared link, the URL is the single source of truth.

Tips for a good draw

1. Paste straight from a spreadsheet column — one name per line is all the format you need.
2. Use Shuffle before spinning if entries were added in a meaningful order; it reassures the audience, although it does not change the odds.
3. For prize draws, announce the rules first (single winner vs. elimination) and spin with the screen visible.
4. Keep entries under about 60 if people need to read the slices on screen.
5. Duplicated names are treated as separate slices — deduplicate first unless you intend to weight.

Frequently asked questions