What is a yes or no wheel?
A yes or no wheel is a spinning wheel divided into slices, where every slice carries one of two answers. You ask a question, you spin, and the pointer settles on one slice. That slice is your answer.
The idea is old. Coin flips, drawing straws and rolling dice all do the same job. However, a wheel has one clear advantage: you can see the odds. Every slice is drawn in proportion to its chance of winning, so a wheel that is half green and half red is visibly a 50/50 wheel.
It is also a decision aid rather than an oracle. The wheel does not know which choice is better. Instead, it removes the stalling and hands you a starting point.
How does the yes or no wheel decide?
Before the animation starts, the page asks the browser for a random number. It uses the Web Crypto API's crypto.getRandomValues(), which is defined by the W3C as a cryptographically strong random source. The number selects the winning slice. Only then does the wheel calculate a rotation that lands the pointer on that slice.
That order matters. Many spinners animate first and read the angle afterwards, which can drift by a fraction of a degree and report the wrong neighbour. Here the winner is fixed up front, therefore the popup, the history list and the copy button always agree with what you see.
Each spin is independent. Five Yes results in a row do not make No more likely on the sixth spin. The wheel has no memory of previous results unless you switch on elimination mode.
How do the odds and weights work?
Every slice carries a weight, which defaults to 1. A slice's chance of winning is its weight divided by the total weight of all slices. With the default ten slices, the total weight is 10 and each slice holds 1, so each slice has a 10% chance. Five of them say Yes, so Yes wins 50% of the time.
Raise the weight on a Yes slice to 3 and the total becomes 12. That slice now wins 3 in 12 spins, or 25%, and the combined Yes share climbs to 7 in 12, roughly 58%. The wheel redraws immediately, so the new odds are visible rather than hidden in a settings panel.
Weighting is useful when a decision is not genuinely balanced. For example, you may be 80% sure you want to go out. Setting the odds to match that feeling still leaves room for the other answer.
Definitions: the terms used on this page
- Slice — one wedge of the wheel, carrying a single option. Ten slices means ten wedges.
- Weight — a number that scales a slice's size and therefore its chance of winning. Default is 1.
- Elimination mode — after a slice wins it is removed, so repeated spins produce an order rather than a repeat.
- Accumulation mode — winners are kept and counted, which is useful for tallies and score keeping.
- Preset — a ready-made list of options you can load in one click, such as Yes / No / Maybe.
- Share link — the whole wheel encoded into the page address, so anyone opening the link sees your exact slices.
When should you let a wheel decide?
Use it when the two options are close. If you have weighed a choice for more than a few minutes and still cannot separate the options, the gap between them is probably smaller than the cost of deciding. A spin closes the loop.
There is a second, quieter benefit. Watch your reaction to the result. If the wheel says no and you feel relieved, you already knew your answer, and the spin simply surfaced it. Consequently, many people use the wheel as a preference detector rather than a referee.
Do not use it for choices with real stakes. Medical, legal, financial and safety decisions deserve advice, not randomness.
How do you use it, step by step?
- Phrase your question so that Yes and No are both complete answers. Say it out loud.
- Pick a preset, or type your own options into the list on the right.
- Adjust the weights if the choice is not an even one.
- Press spin and wait for the pointer to settle. The result appears in the popup and in the history list.
- Copy the result or share the wheel link if someone else needs to see it.
Can you share or embed the wheel?
Yes. The share button encodes your slice list into the URL, so a colleague who opens that link gets the same wheel without an account. Nothing is stored on a server.
Teachers and bloggers can also embed a wheel with an iframe. The embed view renders the wheel alone, without the site header or footer, so it fits neatly inside a lesson page or an article.
Is it private?
Your questions and options stay in your browser. The wheel does no server round trip to spin, and saved wheels are written to local storage on your own device.
Analytics only load after you accept them in the consent banner. If you decline, no analytics or advertising scripts are requested at all.
Which other wheels are worth trying?
- Picker wheel — any list of options, with weights, elimination mode and saved wheels.
- Coin toss — a 3D coin flip with a running heads and tails score.
- Multi wheel combo — spin several wheels together, such as meal plus movie plus activity.
- Team picker wheel — split a list of names into groups, pairs or a turn order.
- 3D dice roller — dice from D4 to D100, or any custom number of sides.
Which questions suit this wheel?
- Should I go to the event tonight?
- Do we order in or cook?
- Should I send the message today?
- Do we take the earlier train?
Need more than two answers? The picker wheel takes any list of options, coin toss flips a 3D coin, and the multi wheel combo decides several things at once. Browse ready-made wheels for pre-filled lists.