★ Let the draw decide ★
Pickers and random draws
Whose turn, which prize, what happens next: draws that settle it in front of everybody.
All 18 tools
Bag of tokens
Type what goes in, shake the bag and pull a token out. Nothing comes out twice unless you put it back.
OpenMarbles in a bag
Colours and quantities you choose, with the chance of each one shown before every draw.
OpenNames in a hat
Every name on its own slip. Pull one out, or pair everybody up without anyone drawing themselves.
OpenRaffle drum
Numbered tickets or names, a drum that turns, and a winners list in draw order.
OpenLottery ball machine
Numbered balls in a blower, called one at a time, with a board of everything already out.
OpenPlinko board
Pegs, a disc and labelled slots at the bottom. Drop it and the bounces decide where it lands.
OpenSpin the wheel
A random name picker for classrooms, raffles and whose turn it is next.
OpenCoin flip
Heads or tails in one tap, with a coin you can watch turn and a tally for best of three.
OpenTile bag
A finite pool of letters, numbers or your own tiles. Draw a hand, count what is left, put tiles back.
OpenMystery envelopes
Seal your outcomes in envelopes, shuffle them face down, and let somebody choose one to open.
OpenBag builder
Tokens go in and rules decide what happens when they come out: back in the bag, out for good, or bring friends.
OpenBlind draw
Face-down cards nobody can see. Everybody takes one, then they all turn over at once.
OpenClaw machine
Steer the claw and drop it. The prize is a fair draw, and the grab chance is printed on the cabinet.
OpenPull-tab ticket
Write what hides under each tab, then peel them one at a time in order or in any order.
OpenCall the toss
Two sides, one call locked in before the flip, and a score for who called it right.
OpenMagic 8 ball
Ask a yes or no question, shake, and read the triangle. The answers can be your own.
OpenPaper fortune teller
Pick a colour, count it out, pick a number, lift the flap. Then print one to fold.
OpenJudge's gavel
Bang it and deliver a verdict. The host rules, or the gavel does, and the session keeps a record.
OpenLetting the draw decide
A picker exists to take a decision off a person. Whose turn it is, which prize goes to which table, which of two plans the room is going with: the moment a teacher or a host chooses, somebody decides it was unfair. A draw made in front of everybody ends that argument before it starts, and that is most of the value.
The rest of the value is theatre. A wheel that takes three seconds to slow down holds a room in a way that reading the next name off a list never does, and a coin you can watch turn is more convincing than one flipped behind a hand. Both tools here pick the result first and then animate towards it, so what you watch is an honest replay of a draw that has already happened rather than a decoration wrapped around a guess.
Which picker, and when
Spin the wheel is the one to reach for when the list changes every time: thirty names on Monday, six chores on Saturday, the order five teams present in. Type it once and spin it all session. The coin flip is for the two-way call at the start, and call the toss is the same coin with somebody committing out loud first.
When everybody should come out exactly once, use the hat, which also pairs a whole group up without anybody drawing themselves. When the odds are the lesson, the marbles put the chance of each colour on screen and move it as the bag empties, and the peg board shows the same idea as a shape you can watch fill up.
For a room rather than a screen, the lottery balls call numbers one at a time and double as the bingo caller for our printed cards and tickets, the raffle drum turns for a hall full of stubs, and the blind draw makes teams without ranking anybody out loud.
Names stay in this browser
Names typed into a picker stay in the page you typed them into. They are not sent anywhere and there is no account they could be attached to. The wheel can fold its list into a share link so a colleague who opens that link gets the same wheel, and that is the one place typed text travels, on purpose and only when you ask for it.
Treat such a link the way you would treat the list itself, because anything it passes through, a messaging app or a shared browser's history, can see what is inside it. No other picker here puts typed text in a link at all: the rest carry a setting, a range or the name of a ready-made set, and nothing else.
A few of these imitate a raffle, a lottery or a prize machine, and they say on their own pages what they are: party mechanics with no stakes, nothing wagered and nothing of value won. What each picker keeps on your device is written out in full on the privacy page, key by key.
Questions
- Is the draw really random?
- Yes. The result comes from the cryptographic random generator built into your browser, and it is drawn before the animation starts, so no spin, bounce or shake can be steered towards an answer.
- Which picker should I use?
- The wheel when the list changes every time, the hat when every name should come out once, the bag when the odds matter and you want them on screen, and the lottery balls when you are calling bingo. They all draw the same way underneath.
- Does a picker remember my list?
- It keeps your list in the browser you typed it into. A wheel can fold its list into a share link when you ask for one, and no other picker here ever puts anything you typed into a link.
- Can I use a picker with a class?
- Yes, and most people do. Put it on the board, type the register once, and draw for turns, for groups and for who answers the next question.
Other families
Cards and decks
Shuffle, deal and draw on the screen, from a standard pack or a deck you wrote yourself.
See themParty games
Prompts and referees for the games everybody already knows, with the scoring and the clock built in.
See themBuzzers and votes
Hidden votes cast on one passed-around device and turned face up for the whole table at once.
See themEvery family is listed on the tools page.