SpinKitPicker wheel: make a free spinning picker in seconds
Options on a wheel, one spin, no arguments — the friendliest form a random choice can take.
A picker wheel is exactly what it sounds like: you put options on a spinning wheel, give it a whirl, and let the pointer pick one. It's the friendliest form a random choice can take — no dice to lose, no arguments about whether the coin was caught fairly, just a wheel everyone watched land.
What people actually use picker wheels for
- Names — who answers next in class, who wins the giveaway, whose turn it is to present.
- Food — takeaway roulette, dinner rotation, "where are we eating" with friends who won't choose.
- Prizes — raffles and prize draws where the wheel is the ceremony.
- Games — truth or dare, forfeit wheels, challenge pickers for streams and parties.
- Work — stand-up order, code-review assignments, who runs the retro.
- Decisions — any small choice you've been circling for ten minutes; see the decision wheel guide.
Make one in about thirty seconds
- Open the SpinKit picker wheel — no account needed.
- Paste or type your options, one per line.
- Spin — flick it with your finger or tap the center.
The wheel saves on your device automatically, works offline, and you can keep as many separate wheels as you like — one for dinner, one for the class register, one for the forfeit list.
The settings worth knowing
- Weighted slices. Give an entry a bigger slice and it gets proportionally better odds — visible to everyone, so it stays fair. Ideal for raffle tickets bought in multiples.
- Remove winner on spin. Drawn entries leave the wheel so nobody is picked twice — the setting that turns a picker wheel into a proper raffle.
- Raffle mode. Draw several winners from one spin session instead of re-spinning by hand.
- Colors and themes. Palettes, per-entry colors and a dark mode, so the wheel looks right on a projector or a stream overlay.
Sharing the spin
A picker wheel is a group tool, so SpinKit is built for showing it: one tap makes it fullscreen for classrooms and projectors, short links share a wheel with anyone, embeds drop a live wheel into your own website, and live rooms let a remote group watch the same spin at the same moment — with chat, and even hand-the-wheel-over control.
When a wheel isn't the right picker
The wheel picks one thing at a time. If you need a random combination (one starter + one main + one dessert), use slot reels. If you need random rows out of a spreadsheet, use a Spin Sheet. And to split a list into fair groups, the team generator does it in one tap. Same app, same lists — just the right shape of random for the job.
One wheel per job, not one mega-wheel
A picker wheel earns trust by being obviously about one decision. The class-register wheel should not also hold Friday’s forfeit list. The dinner wheel should not still contain last month’s raffle prizes. Mix jobs on one wheel and you will eventually spin a name when you meant a takeaway, or a prize when you meant a chore. Save separate wheels. Name them after the job, not after the tool.
The same rule applies to leftovers. After a raffle, do not leave the winner on the wheel “as a souvenir” if you might spin that wheel again tomorrow. Remove, reset, or duplicate into an archive copy. A picker that still contains last week’s winner is how someone gets drawn for a prize they already won — or, worse, how a leftover dummy slice steals a chance from a real entry.
When a picker wheel is the wrong ceremony
Use a picker wheel when the room needs to watch one option land. Skip it when the job is a documented draw from a spreadsheet, a without-replacement sample of two hundred rows, or a team split that must stay even. Those jobs have tools that keep the extra columns, the export, or the group sizes attached. Pasting two hundred emails onto a wheel so the slices are unreadable is not “more festive”; it is harder to check.
If someone may ask “prove that was the list”, keep a receipt and show the entries before you spin. A picker wheel without a visible list is just a coin you flipped in another room. Local-first helps here: the list lives on the device you are presenting from. You do not need an account to start, and you should not need a login wall to finish a classroom pick.
Without-replacement is a setting, not a vibe
“Don’t pick the same person twice” is a rule you turn on, not a hope. If remove-winner is off, repeats are fair. If it is on, the pool shrinks and late names get a larger share of what is left — which is also fair, and worth saying out loud so nobody thinks the wheel “got stuck” on the last few slices. Decide the rule before the first spin. Changing it halfway through a raffle is how a room stops believing you.
Raffle mode — several winners from one session — is the same idea with less clicking. Draw the main winner, then the reserves, from one list, in view. Do not spin once, screenshot, then quietly spin again off-camera for a “backup”. The backup is part of the ceremony or it is not a backup.