How to use it
- Paste or type your names, one per line or separated by commas.
- Choose how many to pick and press Pick. With “Take picked names out of the pool” ticked, picked names are set aside so everyone gets a turn before anyone repeats; the line under the buttons shows who is left.
- Press Shuffle the whole list for a random order of everyone, for presentation slots or turn order; Start over returns all names to the pool.
How it works
Each choice draws a 32-bit value from crypto.getRandomValues and uses rejection sampling to turn it into a position with no bias. Picking several names is a partial Fisher–Yates shuffle: the first position is swapped with a random position, the second with a random position from the second onward, and so on, which makes every selection and order equally likely. The Wheel Spinner does the same job visually for a single pick.
What we tested
On October 14, 2026 we ran the page’s own functions with the same Web Crypto API: 700,000 single picks from 7 names (chi-square 8.11 on 6 degrees of freedom), 400,000 picks of 2 from 5 names, all 20 orders equally common (19.1 on 19), and 480,000 shuffles of 4 names, all 24 orders equally common (19.45 on 23); none of 20,000 multi-name picks contained a repeat. Swapping in the common “swap with any position” shuffle pushed the shuffle test to a chi-square above 14,000, so the test would catch it. In Chromium: one pick returned a name from the list; picking 3 at a time returned 3 different names, and after 8 names every one had been picked exactly once and the page said everyone had been picked; the picks survived a reload; Start over returned all 8; Shuffle listed all 8 names in a random order; an empty list showed a message; the page fitted a 390 px phone with no errors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Built by Derek Giordano · Part of Ultimate Design Tools