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AhaSlides Spinner Wheel in preview mode, showing the presenter screen beside the participant phone view
The Spinner Wheel slide adds a live wheel of names and random name picker to your presentation. Fill the wheel with entries — or autofill your participants’ names — then press the button at the centre, and the wheel spins and slows down to land on one entry, live in front of your audience.

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Spinner Wheel at a glance

Only the Presenter side can spin the wheel. Spin results will not be saved in the Excel export file.

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How to run the Spinner Wheel

AhaSlides Spinner Wheel slide type highlighted in the slide type picker
  1. In the editor, click New slide and choose Spinner Wheel.
  2. Add entries by typing them or autofilling participant names (see Add entries to the Spinner Wheel).
  3. Click Present, then click the Spin button in the presenter controls or press the spacebar. The wheel spins and gradually slows down with every entry visible to the audience, then stops on a segment and highlights the selected name or option for everyone to see.
  4. Choose what happens to the selected entry: Remove it from the wheel so it cannot be selected on the next spin (for elimination-style draws or picking several unique winners in sequence), or Keep it in for independent spins where repeated selections are acceptable. Click Spin again at any time to run another selection.
Prefer to watch? This video tutorial shows how to add entries to the Spinner Wheel, including audience autofill, and spin it:

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Add entries to the Spinner Wheel

Click the Entries field on the right panel of the editor and type your first entry. Hit ⏎ Enter after each one to add the next, or paste a list you’ve copied to your clipboard all at once. Click Save when you’re done.This method is ideal for fixed lists where the entries are known in advance — for example, team names, discussion topics, prize categories, or a list of cities.
You can also add entries to your Spinner Wheel while presenting in presentation mode — there’s no need to return to the editor.
AhaSlides Spinner Wheel slide in the editor with the wheel entries in the Content panel
To remove a manual entry from the wheel before spinning, hover over the entry in the entry list and press the bin icon labelled “Delete this entry.”
With a quick workaround, participants can put entries into the wheel themselves: create a Word Cloud slide and get your participants to submit their wheel entries into the cloud. Then change the slide type from Word Cloud to Spinner Wheel — every submission from the Word Cloud is automatically uploaded as an entry in the wheel.

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Spinner Wheel settings

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Ideas for using the Spinner Wheel

  • Combine with a Word Cloud — collect word submissions on a Word Cloud slide, then spin through the top responses on a Spinner Wheel to select one as the focus for discussion.
  • Use autofill for fair random draws — letting participant names populate automatically means no manual setup and no accusations of a rigged list.
  • Set a long spin duration for dramatic prize reveals — a 30–60 second spin with music or a countdown builds real anticipation in a live audience.
  • Paste a bulk list of names directly into the entry panel — no need to type one by one; a line-separated list pasted in one go is split into individual entries automatically.

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Frequently asked questions

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Can I change the Spinner Wheel slice colours?

Not currently. The Spinner Wheel’s slice colours are set to a fixed default palette and can’t be customised per slice or per presentation. If you’d like this level of control, let our support team know — we pass this kind of feedback to our product team.

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Can I add music or sound to the Spinner Wheel?

Not your own audio. You can’t set up slide audio on the Spinner Wheel — audio can be added to other slide types, but not to the wheel. The wheel does play built-in tick and result sound effects, which you can turn on or off with the Sound effects setting. For music during a long spin, play it from another source in the room. Have a question? Contact our support team — if you’re logged in, use the chat bubble in the bottom-right of your dashboard; otherwise contact us here or email hi@ahaslides.com. Want to connect with other users? Join the AhaSlides community to share tips, request features, and see how others engage their audiences.