A wheel of names, and anything else you paste
This is a random name picker in the plainest sense: every line you type becomes one slice, and the pointer lands on exactly one of them. Many people arrive wanting a wheel of names — a class list, a team, everyone who entered a giveaway — but the wheel has no idea what the text means. Numbers, restaurants, chores, movie titles and yes-or-no all behave identically.
The list is editable at all times, including after a spin. Paste over it, delete a few lines, or clear it and start again; the wheel redraws as you type, so what you see is always what will be drawn from. People call this kind of tool a spin wheel, a wheel spinner, a spinner wheel or a picker wheel more or less interchangeably, and they all mean the same thing: a circle divided into slices, and a pointer that stops on one of them.
Using it as a name wheel
A name wheel is the most common shape this takes: paste a class list, a roster or a list of entrants, and let it choose. There is a distinction worth drawing, though, because two different jobs get described with the same words. Picking from names you already have is what this page does. Inventing names you do not have is a random name generator, which is a different tool — and if that is what you came for, the wheel can still do it, but you have to give it something to draw from first.
The practical version of that: paste a hundred candidate names into the list and spin to pick one. That combination — a random generator feeding a wheel — works for naming a character, a pet or a team, and it is why the wheel opens with ten sample names you can overwrite in one paste.
Like Google’s spinner, but with your own names on it
Plenty of people meet a spinner wheel for the first time through Google, which shows a small number spinner when you search for one. It is quick for a number between two and six. What it cannot do is take names: there is nowhere to type a class list, a set of chores or the restaurants you are choosing between.
That gap is the whole reason this page exists. Paste any list, up to a thousand lines, and each line becomes its own slice with its own label. If numbers really are what you need, the random number wheel has one-tap ranges from 1–2 up to 1–100, and a coin-style pick a number 1 or 2 wheel for the two-way calls.
How this wheel spinner picks a winner
The simplest way to build a wheel spinner is to turn it by a random amount and read off whichever slice the pointer stops on. This one works the other way around. The winner is drawn first, from the cryptographic random number generator built into your browser, and only then is the rotation calculated to land the pointer on that slice. The animation is presentation; the draw already happened.
Drawing first means the result never depends on how the animation is timed or where a slice edge falls on screen, and it lets the page show its working. After a spin, open How this spin was drawn under the result: it lists the random number your browser produced, any values that were thrown away, and the arithmetic that turned the number into the winning slice.
The draw itself uses rejection sampling rather than a plain remainder. Taking a random 32-bit number modulo the number of slices very slightly favors the first few slices whenever the slice count does not divide evenly into the range — a rounding artifact rather than a conspiracy, and invisible on a wheel of six. On the long lists people actually paste it grows, and discarding the short uneven tail of draws removes it completely at no cost.
What people use a spinner wheel for
In classrooms it decides who answers next, which is mostly a way of taking the choice away from the teacher so nobody feels singled out. For giveaways and raffles it draws a winner in front of the people who entered, which is the entire point — a name appearing in a box is an assertion, whereas a wheel slowing to a stop is something everyone watched happen.
The rest is smaller and more human. Groups use a picker wheel to settle where to eat without anyone having to own the decision. Streamers put viewer suggestions on it. People stuck between two reasonable options use it to find out which result they were quietly hoping for. That last one is not really randomness at all, and it is still a perfectly good reason to spin.
Drawing without repeats
By default every spin is independent, so the same name can win twice in a row — which is correct behavior, and the same reason a coin can land heads twice. When you need each entry to come up once, switch on Remove the winner after each spin. The winner is taken off the wheel, the remaining slices grow to fill the circle, and spinning until the list empties gives you a complete random order. That is the setting to use for drawing prize places, setting a presentation order, or dealing people into teams.
Your list stays in your browser
The wheel’s own code makes no network requests, and that is checked mechanically before each release rather than simply claimed: the build fails if the site’s JavaScript files contain any of the standard ways to open a connection, or if any page loads anything from another origin except the Google Analytics and Google AdSense tags described in the privacy policy. Your list is never uploaded, never stored on a server and never logged, because there is no server involved in the spinning. Running on your device also means the wheel keeps working if your connection drops after the page has loaded. The analytics and ad tags do talk to Google: one sends data about visits and how pages are used, tied to a pseudonymous ID in a cookie, the other fetches ads and sets advertising cookies. The wheel hands neither of them your entries.
Sharing does not change that. “Copy link” writes the list into the link itself, after the # sign, and that part of an address stays in the browser: it is not sent when the page is requested, and it is not in the address the analytics tag records. The wheel lives in the link, so bookmarking it keeps the wheel and sending it hands someone the same one.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make a spinner wheel?
Type or paste your options into the box beside the wheel, one per line, and each line becomes a slice as you type. Then press “Spin the wheel” or tap the wheel. It holds up to 1,000 entries, works on a phone as well as a computer, and needs no account or download.
How does the random name picker choose a winner?
It draws the winner before the wheel moves. Your browser’s cryptographic random number generator produces a 32-bit number, that number picks one slice, and only then is the spin calculated to stop the pointer on it. After any spin, open “How this spin was drawn” under the result to see the number, any values that were thrown away, and the slice it maps to.
Is the wheel spinner truly random?
Yes, as random as a browser can make it. The draw uses the same kind of cryptographic generator browsers use for encryption keys, and rejection sampling removes the small bias a plain remainder would give some slices whenever the slice count does not divide evenly into the generator’s range. Before each release, a chi-square test over hundreds of thousands of draws checks the spread, and it is also required to catch a deliberately skewed picker.
Can this wheel of names be rigged?
No. The page has no hidden setting, no secret weighting and no way to choose the winner in advance: the result comes from your browser’s random generator, not from anything the person running the wheel can set. The only way to change the odds is to repeat a line, which shows as an extra line in the list and a bigger slice on the wheel.
How do you win on a random name picker?
You cannot, and that is the point of a random picker. The winner is drawn before the wheel starts turning, so when you press Spin, how often you tap and how fast the wheel seems to go change nothing. Every line has the same chance, and the only way to better odds is to be on the list more than once, where everyone can see it.
How do I change the probability of one name?
Repeat its line. Each line is one slice, so writing a name twice gives it twice the area and twice the chance of an entry written once. Because the weighting shows as visible area rather than a hidden percentage, everyone watching can see the odds.
How do I save or share a wheel?
Press “Copy link” under the list. The whole list, plus the remove-the-winner setting, is packed into the link itself, after the # sign, so bookmarking the link keeps the wheel and sending it gives someone the same one. The list is stored nowhere except in that link, so if you lose the link, nobody can recover the wheel for you. To put a wheel on your own website, use the embed code linked in the footer.
Is this wheel of names safe to use?
It asks for nothing and installs nothing: there is no account and no download. Nothing you type leaves your browser, because the list, the draw and the animation all run on your device, and your entries are never sent to a server, stored or logged. The outside scripts on the page are Google Analytics, which counts visits and how pages are used, under a pseudonymous cookie ID, and Google AdSense, which shows ads and sets advertising cookies as the privacy policy describes. The wheel hands neither of them your entries. A share link keeps the list after the # in the address, a part browsers do not send to any server.
Is the spin the wheel tool free?
Yes, completely. There is no account, no sign-up, no usage cap and no paid tier, so share links, presenter mode and embedding cost nothing too. Spin it as many times as you like.
How do I use a random name picker in class?
Paste the class list and switch on “Remove the winner after each spin”, so nobody is picked twice until everyone has had a turn. The button beside “Spin the wheel” opens presenter mode, which fills the screen and shows the result large enough to read from the back of the room; press Space or Enter to spin and Escape to leave. Press “Copy link” once, and the same class list is a bookmark away for the next class.