A random name picker that works offline

How does the random draw actually work?

The winner is drawn first, by weighted random selection, and the wheel is then animated to land on it. That order is the whole difference between a picker whose weights are exact and one whose weights are approximate.

The common alternative is to spin to a random angle and read off whatever sits under the pointer. It looks the same and it is not the same: the odds then depend on the geometry of the slices and on where the animation happens to stop, which is why weight settings in apps built that way do not quite behave as the numbers suggest.

Can you give some names a better chance?

Yes, and you can see the real percentages as you set them rather than guessing at the effect. That matters for a raffle where entries earned different numbers of tickets, or a chore rota where one person genuinely should come up less often.

The percentages shown are the actual draw probabilities, because they are the same numbers the draw uses.

How do you pick names without repeating anyone?

Elimination mode removes each winner as it comes up, so the same name cannot be drawn twice. That is the behaviour you want for drawing a running order, seeding a knockout, or working through a class without anyone being picked twice while somebody else is never picked at all.

Does it handle long lists?

Paste a whole list at once — a class register, a team sheet, a column from a spreadsheet — and the wheel builds itself rather than making you add entries one at a time. Hundreds of entries stay legible, where many wheel apps turn into an unreadable blur somewhere past fifty.

• Shuffle, sort, reverse or strip duplicates in one tap.
• Search your saved wheels by name once you have a few dozen.
• Save as many wheels as you like and reuse them; changes save as you type.

What can you put on a wheel?

Anything you would otherwise argue about or decide by whoever speaks first. The app ships with more than a hundred ready-made wheels across ten categories, so the first spin needs no setup — but the ones people keep are usually the ones they build.

• Names — a class register, a team sheet, the people in your household.
• Food — the four places you actually order from, or what to cook tonight.
• Chores — who washes up, who takes the bins out, who drives.
• Order of play — who goes first, presentation order, a knockout draw.
• Yes or no, this or that, now or later — when the question has two answers and neither of you will pick.

Why use an app rather than a website?

Most of the time a website is fine. An app earns its place in three situations, and if none of them applies to you, a browser tab is a perfectly good answer.

You have no reliable connection

A school hall, a basement, a plane, a phone with no data left. Spin Wheel works with no connection at all, because nothing about the draw needs one.

You use the same wheels repeatedly

A class register or a team list you rebuild every week is a wheel you should be able to save once and open in a second.

You want a decision in one tap

The home screen widget spins without opening anything. Most decisions this gets used for take ten seconds, and launching an app was most of the ten.

What happens to the names you type in?

They stay on your phone. There is no account, no sign-up and no server of ours holding your wheels, so a list of your students or your colleagues is not being uploaded anywhere by using this.

The app itself asks Android for three things: permission to vibrate, permission to send you the one notification described in its privacy policy, and permission to start after a restart so a scheduled notification still arrives. The network permissions come from the advertising component, and advertising is the only part of the app that uses a connection.

Is it free?

Free, with no subscription and no paid tier. It is supported by advertising, and no feature is held back behind it — no ad interrupts a spin or appears while you are editing a wheel.