Why use this wheel
Big lists stay readable
Labels scale and truncate as the wheel fills up, and the full name always appears in the result screen and history.
Made for a room
Fullscreen on a projector, audible spin, and a winner announcement in large high-contrast type.
Nothing is uploaded
A list of real people's names stays in your browser's storage. No account, no server, no data-protection paperwork.
What a wheel of names is actually for
The phrase covers three fairly different jobs. The first is picking one person out of many — a prize winner, whoever presents next, who has to break the bad news to the client. The second is working through a group so that everyone gets exactly one turn. The third is not really picking at all: it is putting the list on screen so that a room full of people can see that the draw was genuine.
All three come down to the same underlying need, which is a decision nobody can be blamed for. When a person chooses, someone will read intent into it. When a visibly random wheel chooses in front of everyone, there is nothing to read into. That is why the format survives in classrooms, on streams and in offices despite being wildly less efficient than a one-line script.
Anything can go on the wheel — first names, full names, usernames, employee numbers, team names, ticket IDs. Names with accents, non-Latin scripts and emoji all render correctly, so an international roster does not need transliterating first.
Handling large rosters
A wheel with sixteen names is comfortable. A wheel with a hundred is a different object: the slices become slivers, the labels shrink to unreadable, and the wheel face stops being the useful part of the interface. That is expected rather than a failure — past roughly forty names the result screen and the history list are what you should be reading, and the wheel becomes the theatre that makes the result credible.
Paste handles the bulk work. A column copied from a spreadsheet, a comma-separated line, or a messy block from a chat thread all parse correctly, with blank lines and stray whitespace stripped. Duplicates are removed by default, which is usually right for a sign-up sheet where somebody entered twice — turn it off when a repeat is deliberate.
Everyone once, or one name at a time
If you need each person to come up exactly once, switch to Battle Duel and every name is removed as it is drawn. This is the mode for calling on a class, setting a running order, or drawing first, second and third place. Spinning a plain wheel and re-spinning past repeats sounds equivalent and is not: with thirty names, collisions arrive far sooner than intuition suggests.
For a straight one-off pick, Classic mode is the right tool — one spin, one name, no state to reset afterwards.
How to use the wheel of names
- 01
Load the roster
Paste the whole list at once. Sixteen names is comfortable to read on the wheel face; past forty the slices become slivers and the result screen does the real work, which is fine — the wheel is the theatre.
- 02
Check what should happen to repeats
Duplicate names are merged by default. If two different people genuinely share a name, add something to tell them apart before you draw rather than after.
- 03
Pick one name, or work through everyone
Classic draws a single name. Battle Duel removes each name as it is called, which is how you get through a full register without anyone coming up twice.
- 04
Put it on the big screen
Press F for fullscreen before you spin. The wheel scales up, the spin is audible, and the winning name appears in high-contrast type — the whole point of drawing a name in front of people rather than in private.
Frequently asked questions
How many names can go on the wheel?
Hundreds. Around forty the slices become too thin to read, so labels truncate and the fullscreen result plus the history list become the practical output. The wheel still spins and draws correctly at any size.
Do names with accents or non-Latin characters work?
Yes. Names are stored and drawn exactly as typed, so accented Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, CJK scripts and emoji all display correctly on the wheel and in the result.
Can I save more than one list?
One list is saved per page, so you can keep a different roster on each wheel page. To keep several lists for the same purpose, generate a share link for each one and bookmark them — opening a link reloads that exact list.
Is a list of real names safe to put in here?
It never leaves your browser. There is no account and no upload, so a class register or staff list stays on the machine you typed it on — which is generally what a school or workplace privacy policy is asking about.
Can I put emoji, symbols or numbers on the wheel?
Anything you can type. Emoji render at slice size, and mixing them with names is a fast way to make a long roster scannable from the back of a room.
Can I keep a record of who was picked?
The history panel keeps the run, and the share panel exports your list to CSV. There is no server-side record, so if a draw needs to be evidenced later, export it at the time.