What this does
Type your options (one per line), click spin, watch the wheel land on a winner. The animation runs about 4 seconds with an ease-out so the result feels suspenseful but never drags.
The default starts with five dinner options. Replace them with whatever you actually need to decide:
- restaurant choices for a group
- chores someone has to do today
- people on a team to volunteer
- topics for a meeting agenda
- brainstorm prompts to start with
You can have any number of options. Two is the minimum (with one option there’s nothing to randomize). The wheel scales colors and labels automatically, wedges get smaller as you add options, but text stays readable down to about 20 entries.
How it picks
The result is decided by crypto.getRandomValues, a cryptographically secure random byte from the OS. The wheel animation is pure cosmetic; the underlying choice is made before the spin starts and the visual just lands on it. This means the wheel is provably fair: each option has exactly equal probability, no matter what.
If you’ve used decision wheels that “feel” biased toward certain options, that’s usually because the implementation seeded Math.random() poorly or because human pattern-recognition makes runs of 3-4 same-side results feel suspicious. With cryptographic randomness, there’s no bias to detect.
Use cases
- Group decisions: dinner, movie, weekend activity. Lets the group decide together rather than letting one person dominate.
- Tasks: random assignment of chores or workplace duties. Removes the social tax of picking yourself or volunteering someone else.
- Standup speaking order: spin to pick who goes first in a daily standup. Adds a tiny moment of fun to a routine meeting.
- Brainstorm prompts: load options like “consider the opposite,” “what would 10x look like,” “remove a feature.” Spin when you’re stuck.
- Game shows / livestreams: visual spinner on screen for audience-participation decisions.
- Indecision elimination: when you’ve narrowed it down to 2-3 options and you’re stuck, the wheel takes the choice off you.
Differences from a coin flip
A coin flip handles binary decisions. The decision wheel handles N-way decisions. Mathematically the wheel is just a generalization, a 2-option wheel is functionally a coin flip, but visually a wheel with 5+ options communicates “this is genuinely a random choice among many” in a way that coin flipping can’t.
Tips
- Keep labels short. Anything over 12 characters gets truncated in the wheel display (full text still shows in the result panel).
- Match wedge color to category in your head. The 12 colors used here are the same brand colors used elsewhere on the site, so you can mentally tag “pizza = violet” if you’re using the wheel often.
- Use it once for any given decision. Spinning multiple times until you get the answer you wanted defeats the point, you’ve already decided, you just want validation.
Frequently asked questions
Can I weight options differently? Not in this version. Every option has equal probability. For weighted random picks, list the heavier option multiple times, adding “Pizza” three times and “Salad” once gives Pizza 3:1 odds.
Why doesn’t the wheel always stop where I expect? The animation eases out smoothly but the final landing position is determined before the spin starts. The visual matches the result; if it lands on “Sushi” that’s because Sushi was the random pick.
Can I save my wheel? Not currently, the options live in the textarea only as long as the tab is open. For repeated use, paste your options list into a notes app.
Does this work on mobile? Yes. The wheel scales to your viewport. On smaller screens, the option text shrinks but stays legible.