Spin the Wheel Timer

PickerSpin is a spin the wheel timer that starts counting down after the wheel picks — the wheel chooses who is up, then that person gets the time you set, from fifteen seconds to a full hour.

Most spinners count down the wrong way

Nearly every wheel with a timer counts down to the spin. You press a button, numbers tick away, the wheel goes on its own. It looks good on a livestream and it solves nothing for a teacher, because the moment that actually needs timing is the one after the wheel stops.

This one runs the other way. The wheel picks Priya, and Priya's ninety seconds start immediately. Nobody opens a second tab, nobody hunts for the stopwatch on their phone, and nobody has to remember when the turn began.

Where it earns its place

• Cold calling. The wheel picks who answers and sets how long they have to think. The limit is the same for everyone because a wheel set it, not you.
• Presentations and reading aloud. Everyone gets the same two minutes, and the clock is on the board rather than in your head.
• Board games. Turn order from the wheel, turn length from the timer. It ends the conversation about whose turn is dragging.
• Standups. Draw the speaking order, give each person the same ninety seconds, and the meeting stops running long.
• Party games. Truth or dare with a clock on it moves considerably faster.

Any length, not just the two somebody chose for you

The handful of tools that do time something after a pick lock you into one or two fixed lengths. You get whatever they decided, which is fine right up until your activity is not two minutes long.

Here the presets cover the usual cases — fifteen and thirty seconds, one, two and five minutes — and the custom box takes any number of seconds up to an hour. A forty-five second answer, a seven minute task, a twenty minute silent read. Your choice sticks on the device, so the wheel opens tomorrow already set the way you left it.

Built to be read from the back of the room

The countdown sizes itself to the screen it is on, so it stays legible on a phone in your hand and on a projector across a hall. Go fullscreen and it grows with the wheel. Turn a phone sideways and the dial moves beside the controls rather than pushing them off the bottom.

A soft tick marks each second while the clock runs, rising in pitch for the last five. When time is up the card flashes and three beeps play, deliberately unlike the winner chime — so a room that is looking elsewhere can still tell "someone won" from "time is up". Turn the ticking off on its own, or mute everything with the speaker button.

The rest of it still applies

This is the ordinary wheel spinner with the timer switched on, so nothing else changes. The winner is still drawn with the browser's Web Crypto API before the animation starts, and you can still check that yourself. Remove-after-spin still works, so a class of thirty is called once each before anyone repeats. There is no account and no ads.

If you want the wheel without the clock, the classroom spinner keeps saved rosters, and the team generator handles the grouping before you start.