Click the wheel or press Space Tap the wheel to spin
Random Name Picker
Paste your roster in, spin, and let the wheel take the blame for who goes first.
A fair draw everyone can watch
Type or paste your names, spin, and the wheel lands on one. The point is not that a computer picked - you could do that silently. The point is that everybody watched it happen and nobody could have arranged it.
That matters more than it sounds. A teacher calling on a student, a manager picking who presents, a streamer drawing a winner: in each case the choice is easy and the appearance of fairness is the hard part. A visible spin removes the question before it is asked.
Getting your list in
Paste a whole class roster at once and every line becomes a name on the wheel. Copy straight out of a spreadsheet column, a register, a chat thread of sign-ups - line breaks are all the tool needs.
The list stays in your browser, so tomorrow's lesson opens on the same class you set up today. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account to make.
Three things worth setting
- Remove takes each name off after it is drawn, which is how you get a running order rather than the same name twice. Draw until the wheel is empty and you have a full sequence.
- Weight gives a name more of the wheel. Useful when somebody has not had a turn in a while and you want the nudge to be visible rather than hidden.
- Count keeps a tally of who has come up, which over a term is a quieter way of noticing who you have been calling on.
Using it in a classroom
The wheel does two jobs in a room of thirty. It picks, and it takes the sting out of being picked: a spinner chose you, not the teacher, and that reframing is worth a surprising amount with a nervous class.
For groups rather than individuals, spin repeatedly with Remove on and deal the names out - first four spins are group one, next four are group two. It takes under a minute and no one negotiates their way into a friendship group.
Put it on the projector in fullscreen and the whole room can see the draw. There is nothing to install and it works on a school network with the tab open and nothing else running.
Giveaways and prize draws
Paste the entrant list, spin, and screen-record it if the result needs to be defensible. A recording of a live draw answers the accusation that a winner was chosen in advance in a way that an announcement never does.
Each spin uses your browser's cryptographic random number generator rather than the ordinary one, and the winner is drawn before the animation is solved to land on it. Frame rate and spin length cannot influence the outcome, which is the property that matters if anyone ever questions a draw.
When a wheel is the wrong tool
For anything with legal weight - a regulated prize promotion, an audited selection, a randomised trial - use a method that produces a record and can be independently verified. A wheel in a browser tab is transparent to the people in the room and to nobody else.
It is also the wrong tool when the choice is not really random. If one person genuinely should present, deciding it by spin is theatre that postpones a judgement somebody has to make anyway.
What is on the Random Name Picker
- Alex
- Priya
- Sam
- Jordan
- Riya
- Chris
- Maya
- Dev
Questions
Random Name Picker FAQ
How many names can the wheel hold?
There is no fixed limit. A class of thirty is comfortable and a list of a hundred still spins, though labels shrink as the list grows - past about sixty the names get small on a phone. If you only need the result rather than a readable rim, the size does not matter.
How do I stop the same name coming up twice?
Switch the mode to Remove in Settings. Each winner is taken off the wheel after it is drawn, so repeated spins give you a running order with no repeats until the wheel is empty.
Can I save my class list for tomorrow?
It saves itself. Your list is kept in your browser's local storage, so it is still there when you reopen the page on the same device. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.
Can I share a wheel with a colleague?
Yes. The share button copies a link with your list encoded in it. Anyone who opens that link gets the same wheel ready to spin, without signing up.
Is the draw genuinely random?
Yes. Each spin draws from crypto.getRandomValues(), the cryptographic generator browsers provide for security tokens, not the ordinary Math.random(). Integers are drawn by rejection sampling, which avoids the slight bias a plain modulus introduces.
Does it work on a school projector or an interactive whiteboard?
Yes. There is a fullscreen mode that hides everything except the wheel, and once the page has loaded it needs no further connection since every spin is computed in the browser.
More wheels