Spin the Wheel
Put your list on a wheel and spin it to pick one.
Loading the wheel…
About the Spin the Wheel converter
Deciding who goes first, what to eat, or which name comes out of the hat is quicker when something else does the choosing.
Type or paste a list, press spin, and the wheel picks one. Your list stays on this device, so it is still there the next time you open the page.
The winner is drawn before the wheel turns
Most wheels spin by a random amount and report whatever ends up under the pointer. That makes the fairness a property of the animation, and it goes subtly wrong when segments are uneven or the wheel stops near a boundary.
Here the draw happens first, from the same cryptographic source used for the dice, and the wheel is then turned so it lands on that segment. The picture is only ever a picture — which is also why the result is identical if you have reduced motion turned on and the animation is skipped.
Weights, for when the chances are not equal
Turning on weights lets one entry take a bigger slice than another — useful for a raffle where people hold different numbers of tickets, or a chore rota where somebody owes a turn.
A weight of zero keeps an item on the list but takes it out of the draw, which is a tidier way to skip somebody than deleting and retyping them.
Drawing without replacement
Switch on "remove the winner" and each spin takes its result off the wheel. That is what you want for picking an order — teams, presentation slots, a Secret Santa — rather than picking the same name twice.
Duplicates are handled one at a time, so a name entered twice has two chances and loses one of them per win.
Frequently asked questions
Is it actually random?
Yes, and more carefully than most. The numbers come from your browser’s cryptographic random source, and reducing them to a range uses rejection sampling rather than a plain remainder — a remainder makes the low values very slightly more likely, which is exactly the flaw a random picker should not have.
Where is my list saved?
In this browser, on this device. There is no account, so it will not follow you to your phone — but it also cannot be lost by a service shutting down, and nobody else can see it.
How many items can it take?
As many as you like, though labels stop being readable past about two dozen segments and are hidden beyond that. The draw itself stays exact however long the list is.
Does anything leave my device?
No. There is no account and no server involved, so your list is not stored anywhere but your own browser. It also means the page keeps working with the network off.