Yes or No Wheel

About this tool

This yes or no wheel gives you a random answer when you are stuck between two choices, or want a fun way to settle a question. Spin a plain Yes / No wheel, add Maybe as a third answer, play best of 3, or type up to eight labels of your own and give some of them a bigger slice. The answer is chosen by your browser's cryptographic random source before the wheel starts turning, and the wheel then stops exactly on that answer. The odds of every slice are shown next to the wheel, and a history keeps track of your spins.

How to use the yes or no wheel

1. Pick a wheel from the menu: Yes / No, Yes / No / Maybe, Best of 3, or Custom labels.
2. For custom labels, type 2 to 8 options, one per line. Add a comma and a whole number to weight an option, so Pizza, 2 gets twice the slice of an option with no number.
3. Click Spin the wheel. The answer appears in large text under the wheel and is added to the history.
4. For best of 3, keep spinning. The first answer to win two spins wins the series, and the score is shown under the result.
5. Turn on Reduced motion if you prefer the wheel to jump straight to the answer. It switches on by itself when your device asks for less motion.

How the answer is decided

Each spin draws a number with crypto.getRandomValues(), the Web Crypto method that returns cryptographically strong random values, instead of Math.random(). The number is mapped onto the slices with rejection sampling, which throws away the few values that would make one slice slightly more likely than another. Only after the answer is fixed does the tool work out the angle that puts a random point inside the winning slice under the pointer. It then animates the wheel to that angle, so spin speed and timing cannot change the answer.

The wheel is drawn honestly. Every slice takes up the same share of the circle as its chance of winning, and the odds list shows the exact percentage. With the motion setting from prefers-reduced-motion turned on, the spin is skipped and the wheel jumps to the answer.

What 50/50 really means

On the Yes / No wheel, each spin has a 1 in 2 chance of Yes. Every spin is independent: the wheel has no memory, so after three No answers in a row the next spin is still exactly 50/50. Runs are more common than people expect. Five Yes answers in a row has a 1 in 32 chance, about 3.1%, and among 10 spins you get exactly 5 Yes and 5 No only about 24.6% of the time. An uneven history is normal and not a sign that the wheel is broken.

Adding Maybe makes three equal slices, so each answer has a 1 in 3 chance, about 33.33%. Best of 3 does not change the overall odds, since Yes and No each win half of all series, but it makes a single lucky spin count for less. Half of all series are over after two spins, when the same answer comes up twice, and the other half need a third spin.

Worked example

The page opens on the Yes / No wheel: two slices of 180 degrees each and a 50% chance for each answer. The Custom labels sample is Pizza, 2, Tacos and Sushi. Options without a number get a weight of 1, so the weights add up to 4.

Over many spins, Pizza should come up about half the time, but over a short run any of the three can lead.

Tips for using a wheel to decide

• Use it for low-stakes choices. Where to eat, which chore first, whether to watch one more episode. For money, health or legal decisions, gather facts and ask someone qualified.
• Watch your reaction. If the wheel says No and you feel let down, you have learned that you wanted Yes. The spin can surface a preference you already had.
• Agree on the rules first. When a group is deciding, agree that the answer stands before anyone spins, and choose best of 3 up front rather than after a result you dislike.
• Weight honestly. If one option really is more appealing, a weight of 2 or 3 says so openly instead of re-spinning until it wins.

The wheel answers at random. It does not predict the future, read your mind or know anything about your question, so treat the result as a tie-breaker, not advice.

Common mistakes

• Thinking a run of No answers makes Yes due next time. Each spin starts fresh.
• Spinning again until you get the answer you wanted, which turns the wheel into a slower way of choosing yourself.
• Adding the same label twice in Custom mode without noticing, which gives that answer two slices.

Need to choose a person rather than an answer? Use the Random Name Picker. For heads or tails, try the Coin Flip, and for numbers in any range the Random Number Generator. Splitting a group? The Random Team Generator makes random or skill-balanced teams.