Spinner wheel with your own options

What this tool does

It draws one of your options at random and shows the draw as a turning wheel. The wheel takes 2 to 100 options. All segments have the same size and the same chance.

How to use it

1. Enter the options, one per line. The wheel is drawn while you type.
2. Tick “No repeats this round” if every option should win once at most. Each result then leaves the wheel; “Start a new round” brings all options back.
3. Select “Spin the wheel”. The wheel turns for about four seconds and stops with the result under the pointer at the top.
4. Read the result below the wheel. Long options are shortened on the wheel but shown in full in the result.
5. For a class, select “Full screen”. To give others the same wheel, select “Copy share link”.

How the result is made

The result is drawn before the wheel moves. The tool takes a random number from the cryptographic generator of your browser, picks the option with that number and only then calculates how far the wheel must turn to stop inside the segment of this option. The animation shows the result; it does not produce it.

This order matters. A wheel that simply turned for a random time could favour some segments, depending on speed and timing. Here, the speed of your device, the moment of your click and the look of the wheel have no influence on the result.

The place inside the segment where the pointer stops is random too, but it keeps a distance from the borders, so that it is always clear which segment won.

Full screen and share links

In full screen the page shows only the wheel, the no-repeats box, the spin button and the result. The site header, the explanations and any advertising are taken off the page until you leave, with “Exit full screen” or the Esc key. Where the browser allows it, its own bars disappear too; Safari on iPhone does not allow this for web pages, so its bars stay.

A share link contains your options after the # sign of the address. Browsers do not send that part to the website, so the options do not reach this site. They are encoded, not encrypted: anyone who has the link can read them. Someone who opens the link sees the options in the list field; they are not saved on that device unless that person ticks the box.

A link may be up to 8,000 characters long, which is enough for 100 short options. Longer links are cut by some apps, so this limit is a precaution chosen by this site, not a rule of the web.

Reduced motion

If your device is set to reduce motion, the wheel does not turn. It is set to the final position at once and the result appears immediately. The result is drawn in the same way.

The result is also written as text and announced to screen readers, so the wheel does not have to be seen.

Worked example

Four friends cannot agree on dinner. They enter Pizza, Sushi, Tacos and Curry. Every option gets a quarter of the wheel and a chance of 25%. If Pizza stands in the list twice, the wheel has five segments, two of them for Pizza, and the chance of Pizza is 2 in 5, which is 40%.

Common mistakes

• Spinning again until the favourite wins. Decide before the spin whether the result counts.
• More than 100 options. The segments would be thinner than the labels; use the name picker for long lists.
• Long options are cut off on the wheel after 16 characters, after 12 when the wheel has more than 12 options and after 10 when it has more than 40. Options that begin alike then look the same, so put the difference at the beginning.
• An empty line is not an option. The tool ignores empty lines.