CornerTools

Wheel Spinner

Spin a wheel to pick a name or an option at random — weights, elimination and a results list.

6 entries, one per line. End a line with * and a number to weight it: Asha *3 gets three shares.

Mode
5 s

Each entry’s chance is its share of the wheel, weights up to 1,000. The winner is drawn with your browser’s cryptographic random generator. Your list stays on this device.

Type a list, spin, and the wheel picks one entry at random: a name for a turn, a prize winner, tonight’s dinner. It opens with 6 sample names to replace with your own. The winner is drawn by your browser’s cryptographic random generator before the wheel moves, and the spin turns the wheel to it.

How to use it

Entries takes one entry per line, up to 500. Blank lines are skipped, and a line written twice is two slices. Press Spin, the wheel itself, or Ctrl+Enter while typing. Above 100 entries the slices are too thin for text, so the entry under the pointer is named below the wheel instead.

To give an entry a bigger or smaller slice, end its line with an asterisk and a number from 0 to 1,000, with up to three decimal places. An entry without one has a weight of 1, and a weight of 0 takes the entry off the wheel without deleting its line.

  • Normal — after a spin, choose Remove to take the winner off the list, Keep to leave it, or Spin again. Remove deletes only the line that won, not other lines with the same text.
  • Elimination — the winner leaves the wheel automatically, so repeated spins draw several winners with no repeats, or put a group in a random order.
  • Count — every entry stays, and Wins tallies how often each has been picked, beside the latest few results.
  • Shuffle and Sort A–Z reorder the list and drop its blank lines; Clear empties it, and Add samples adds 6 sample names picked at random, to try the wheel or start again.
  • Spin time is 2 to 10 seconds, 5 to start with. Tick sound clicks as each slice passes the pointer and is off until you turn it on.
  • Full screen shows the wheel alone, for a projector or a shared screen, where the browser supports it.

Your list and options are remembered in this browser, on this device, and are not sent anywhere. Results lists the recent winners of this visit and is not stored. If your system is set to reduce motion, the wheel jumps straight to the winner without spinning.

Examples

Weighted entries

Entries
Pizza *3
Tacos
Salad *0.5
Leftovers *0

The weights add up to 4.5, so the chances are Pizza 66.7%, Tacos 22.2%, Salad 11.1%. Leftovers has a weight of 0 and is left off the wheel, which the tool notes under the list.

An asterisk that is not a weight

Entries
5 * 4 = 20
Team *A
2 * 3

Only a number at the very end of a line, after a name, is a weight. The first two lines are names in full; the third is the entry “2” with a weight of 3, giving it 60% of the wheel.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. The winner is not decided by how the wheel happens to slow down. It is drawn first, each entry with a chance equal to its share of the total weight, using the browser’s cryptographic random generator; the animation then stops inside that entry’s slice. Where the wheel was before, how long it spins and the order of the list make no difference.
Use Elimination and spin once per winner. Each winner leaves the wheel, so nobody is picked twice, and Results keeps the order they came out in.
Paste the class list, one name per line, and use Full screen on the projector. Elimination gives every pupil one turn before anyone gets a second; Count keeps everyone on the wheel and shows who has been called most. The names stay in the browser on that device.

See also