Pick a Name Out of a Hat, Online
A virtual hat draw does the same job as folding names onto paper slips, except everyone in the room can see it happen. You paste the names, spin once, and the winner appears on screen. The result comes from your browser’s cryptographic random generator, so no slip sits at the bottom of the pile and no hand can hunt for a familiar fold.
Three steps, about ten seconds
Empty the hat onto the wheel
Paste your list, one name per line. Thirty students, eight colleagues, two hundred giveaway entrants — it all goes in.
Spin instead of reaching in
One click and the wheel turns. Everyone watching sees the same result land at the same moment.
Keep drawing, or start over
Switch on Remove Winner After Spin to pull name after name without repeats, or reset and put every slip back in.
What a paper hat gets wrong
Hat draws feel fair because they are old. In practice a folded slip can be recognised by touch, a thicker fold lands on top, and the last name dropped in is usually the first one pulled out. None of that is cheating on purpose. It is just paper behaving like paper.
The bigger problem is proof. When a prize is involved and someone asks whether the draw was honest, a hat gives you nothing to show. A spin that everyone watched, on a screen everyone could see, ends the conversation. We compared both methods in detail if you want the long version.
Where people actually use it
Secret Santa without the fumbling
Nobody has to redraw because they pulled their own name. Run it once per person with elimination mode on.
Who presents first
A hat draw in a meeting means passing a bowl around. A wheel on the shared screen takes four seconds.
Raffle at a school fair
Parents in the room can watch the draw instead of trusting that the hand in the bucket was honest.
Chores, seats, teams
Who takes the dishes, who sits by the window, who joins which team. Small calls, settled without an argument.
Teachers tend to want something narrower than a one-off draw, so there is a classroom version with roster and no-repeat notes.
Questions people ask
- Is a virtual hat draw as random as a real hat?
- It is more random. A paper hat draw is shaped by how each slip was folded, where it landed, and how deep a hand reaches. WheelieNames uses the browser Web Crypto API to generate each result, so no slip sits at the bottom and no hand can favour one corner.
- How many names can I put in the hat?
- Hundreds. You can paste a whole class roster or a list of giveaway entrants at once instead of typing names one by one. A paper hat gets unwieldy past about thirty slips; a digital one does not.
- Can I draw several names without repeats?
- Yes. Switch on Remove Winner After Spin and each name that gets drawn leaves the wheel, exactly like keeping a slip out of the hat once it is pulled. Useful for picking first, second and third place in one run.
- Do I need an account or an app?
- No. The draw runs in your browser and the names stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no signup, no download and no data to delete afterwards.
- Can people watch the draw happen?
- That is the point. Put it on a projector or share your screen and everyone sees the same spin at the same time. With a real hat, only the person whose hand is inside knows what happened.
More on fairness, limits and privacy lives in the full FAQ.
Ready to draw?
No account, nothing in the way of the wheel, names stay on your device.
Start a hat draw