How to Make a Spin Wheel

How to use it

1. Write the listType each choice on its own line in the wheel above. Keep entries short, and add *2 or *3 after any entry that should come up more often.
2. Pick the rulesIn Options, choose whether winners leave the wheel or wait their turn, set the spin time, and select a color set. Add a title so people know the topic.
3. Spin and keep itPress SPIN. Then copy the link to reopen the same wheel anywhere, save it on this device, or open Present mode to show it on a big screen.

The one-minute way: use a wheel maker

A wheel maker does three jobs for you: it draws the slices, it picks the winner, and it animates the spin so the pointer stops where the pick landed. Doing all three by hand is where homemade wheels get fiddly, which is why the wheel above is the practical starting point. Type your entries, one per line, and the slices appear as you write.

Everything you need is in that box. Shuffle mixes the order of the slices so neighbors are not always related, Sort tidies a list, and Remove duplicates handles a pasted column that repeats itself. If your list already lives in a text or CSV file, Import loads it without retyping. When you are done, Copy link produces an address that contains the whole wheel, so a bookmark or a chat message is enough to bring it back. Comparing wheel makers first? See how TwirlPick compares.

Plan the entries before you spin

A good wheel is decided by its list, not by its graphics. Aim for entries that a person can read in a second: two or three words, not a sentence. Wheels with more than about a dozen slices get cramped, and the labels shrink to fit. For long lists, split the job in two: pick a category with a short wheel, then pick the item.

Decide what you want from a repeat. If you are choosing a restaurant, the same place twice is fine. If you are handing out tasks to a class, it is not. Remove the winner after each spin takes the entry off, and Everyone once before anyone twice brings back the full wheel once every entry has had a turn.

Odds are the other decision. Entries are equal by default. Writing *3 after one makes it three times as likely, which is how you make a favorite appear more often without removing the alternatives. The result shows the chance of the entry that won, so the audience can see the odds were what you said they were.

A worked example: you run a family game night with five challenges, and you want the easy one to appear most. Write Charades *3, Trivia *2, Puzzle, Drawing and Dance on five lines. The weights add up to eight shares, so Charades gets 3 in 8 (37.5 percent), Trivia 2 in 8 (25 percent), and each of the others 1 in 8 (12.5 percent). Turn on remove the winner and the game fills the evening without repeating a challenge.

Making a wheel in Excel or Google Sheets

A spreadsheet has no wheel that spins, but it can do the picking. List your entries in column A, from A2 to A9. In another cell, type =INDEX(A2:A9, RANDBETWEEN(1, COUNTA(A2:A9))). Each recalculation, which you trigger by editing any cell or pressing F9 in Excel, returns a new random entry. Google Sheets recalculates on edit and on its own schedule. If the question is how to randomize in Excel rather than pick one entry, put =RAND() in the cell beside each row and sort by that column; the list comes out in a random order.

For weights, put a number in column B and build a running total in column C (leave B1 for a header), where C2 holds =SUM(B$1:B1) and the formula is copied down. Then =INDEX(A2:A9, MATCH(RAND()*SUM(B2:B9), C2:C9, 1)) picks in proportion to the numbers. Mind the limits: spreadsheet random numbers are fine for a casual choice but are not designed for draws that need trust, and the result can change whenever the sheet recalculates, so copy and paste the value as text once you have your answer.

To get the look of a wheel, select the entries and insert a pie or doughnut chart. It will be a picture, not a spinner. Some people add a macro that rotates a shape; that works, but it is a programming project, and it still needs the picking formula to choose the winner.

A cleaner alternative for a classroom is to keep the spreadsheet for what it does well, which is storing lists. Keep your class roster in a sheet, copy the names column, and paste it into the wheel when you want the visual. That way the roster stays in one place and the wheel is rebuilt in seconds.

Making a wheel in PowerPoint or other slides

In a slide deck, build the wheel as a pie chart or a set of shapes grouped together, add a pointer shape on top, and apply the Spin emphasis animation to the wheel. The animation rotates by a fixed amount that you choose. That means the result is decided by the angle you typed, not by chance, so a slide-based wheel is a prop rather than a random picker.

You can make the prop honest by using a separate source of randomness. Roll a die, draw a card, or use the INDEX formula above in a spreadsheet, and then set the animation angle to land on that answer. It is a lot of effort for a lesson starter, and one reason teachers end up moving to an online wheel for anything that repeats.

Design tools work the same way. They can draw an excellent wheel image, but a picture does not choose anything. If you need the wheel to give an answer, the answer has to come from a program.

Coding your own, in outline

If you are curious how a wheel works inside, the recipe is short. Store the entries in a list with a weight each. Draw a random number with crypto.getRandomValues rather than Math.random. Convert it into a choice without taking a plain remainder, with rejection sampling, so the arithmetic does not favor the first entries. Pick the winner first.

Then compute a stopping angle inside the winner's slice, away from its borders, and animate the canvas to that angle with an ease-out curve. Doing it in that order guarantees the picture and the result agree. Drawing the animation first and reading the winner from where it ended is the usual way to build a wheel that cannot be tested.

Ready-made wheels, sharing and embedding

If you would rather not start from a blank list, open one of the ready-made wheels from the ideas page: dinner ideas, chores, brain breaks, icebreakers, countries, US states and more. Each one opens in the same editor, so you can delete what does not suit and add your own.

A wheel can be shared by link. The address holds the whole wheel after the # sign, and anyone who opens it gets an editable copy with the same entries. Because the entries are in the link, treat it as visible to whoever has it. Save on this device adds the wheel to My wheels, and the page works offline after the first visit.

To put the wheel on your own site or blog, press Embed under it. You get one iframe tag that carries the whole wheel after the # sign, just as a link does; paste it into the HTML of your page. Visitors can spin the wheel inside the frame but cannot change its entries, and anyone who views your page can read them. The code holds the wheel as it was when you pressed the button, so after editing the wheel press Embed again and replace the old code.

There are limits worth knowing. The wheel slices carry text, not pictures. If you need a wheel with images on every slice, a drawing tool will serve you better; if you need a quick, trustworthy pick, a text wheel is faster to make and easier to read from the back of a room.

Whatever you build, think about who needs to trust the result. A wheel for choosing a movie needs no proof. A wheel for handing out a prize to a room of people benefits from a method that others can check, such as the verifiable draw option, which is covered on the giveaway picker and verify pages.

Common mistakes when making a wheel

Too many slices is the first. Past twenty or so, nobody can read the wheel, and a name picker or a team split suits the job better. Long labels are the second: a slice can show only a few words, and the full text is cut off with an ellipsis, so lead with the important word.

A third mistake is mixing very different options. A wheel that holds Pizza, Sushi and Clean the garage confuses people. Keep entries in the same category, and put the odd ones on a second wheel. Finally, remember to test: spin ten times before the event to be sure that the entries, the repeats rule and the color set work on the screen you will use.

Wording is a quieter trap. If entries are names, spell them the way the room expects, since a nickname on the wheel can cause a laugh or an objection. If entries are tasks, start each with a verb so the result reads as an instruction. And if some entries are weighted, tell the group so; a wheel that states its odds is easier to accept than one whose bias is only discovered later.