Spin the Wheel

A prize wheel is one of the oldest tricks for keeping a stream lively. Fill a wheel with options, spin it, and everyone watches it land. Use it for prizes, punishments, or "what game should we play next?".

Spin the Wheel is built into Community. Your wheels are made on one page, shown on stream by one widget, and can be spun by you, your moderators, or a Flow.

Make a wheel

Open Spin the Wheel in the sidebar, under the Engagement group, and choose New wheel.

Give the wheel a Name, then add its options. Each option has:

Setting	What it does
Label	The text on the slice.
Weight	How likely the option is. A bigger weight means a bigger slice and better odds.
Colour	The slice colour. Optional.
Chance	The exact percentage chance, shown for you. You do not set this one.

A wheel needs at least 2 options and can hold up to 100. Labels can be up to 60 characters long.

Weights are what make a wheel feel fair. Give a rare grand prize a weight of 1 and a small prize a weight of 20, and the Chance column shows you exactly what that means.

Then set how the wheel behaves:

Setting	What it does	Default
Reveal time (seconds)	How long the wheel turns before it lands. 1 to 60 seconds.	8
Result hold (seconds)	How long the winner stays on screen after landing. 0 to 30 seconds.	5
Grey out the winner	Each winner is greyed out and cannot win again until you reset the wheel.	Off
Mode	Manual or Earned. See Two kinds of wheel.	Manual
Points per spin	In Earned mode, how many points make one spin.	1

Choose Create wheel (or Save wheel when editing) to apply your changes.

Show it on stream

Add the Spin the Wheel widget to your overlay in the Overlay Editor. See Widgets if you have not added one before.

In the widget's Wheel setting you have two choices:

• Pick a wheel to keep that wheel on screen all the time. Turn on Hide between spins if you would rather it only appears when it spins.
• Leave it on Any wheel and the widget pops up only while a wheel spins, then goes away.

Turn on Show bank to display how many spins are banked and the progress toward the next one. The widget also has a Palette for options without a colour, plus Greyed out, Pointer and Font looks.

It is fair

Community picks the winner on its server, using exactly the odds you set. Every overlay lands on that same winner, and so does the preview on the Spin the Wheel page. When you spin from the page it says: "Your overlay plays this exact spin and lands on the same winner."

Two kinds of wheel

Manual

A manual wheel spins whenever you want. Press Spin on the page, or spin it from a Flow, such as a channel point redeem.

Earned

An earned wheel has a bank of spins that your viewers fill. You decide how, using Flows. For example:

• Use Add to bank on every sub, with the sub's Tier as the points, and set Points per spin to 5. A Tier 1 sub is 1 point, so five of them earn a spin.
• Use Add to bank on every cheer, with the cheer's Bits as the points, and set Points per spin to 100.

Put the ratio in Points per spin, not in the Flow. That way a small cheer still counts toward the next spin instead of being rounded away.

Your own Spin button uses a banked spin if there is one, and spins for free if the bank is empty. Spins started by a Flow always need a banked spin.

Use Set banked spins on the page to change the bank by hand.

Grey out winners

With Grey out the winner on, each winner stays on the wheel but is greyed out and cannot come up again. This is perfect for "pick a game, never repeat it".

Reset brings every option back. You can press the button on the page, or use the Reset wheel Flow step, for example when your stream starts.

You can also grey out any option by hand on the page, using the Greyed out switch beside it.

One spin at a time

A new spin cannot start while one is going, or during the result hold. This is on purpose, so your viewers see the result and you get to react to it before the next one.

Refund a redeem when the wheel is busy

If a viewer spends channel points on a spin and the wheel is busy, you can give their points back. Build this Flow:

1. Channel Point Redeem trigger.
2. Spin wheel effect.
3. If check on Spun.
4. On Pass, Fulfill the redeem. On Fail, Cancel channel-point redemption, with the trigger's Redeem connected to its Redeem input.

See Channel Point Redeem, If and Channel Points.

note

Twitch only lets the app that created a reward cancel its redemptions. The refund works for rewards you created in Community, with Skip Request Queue turned off.

Turn a wheel off

Use the Enabled switch on the page. A wheel that is off cannot spin and cannot bank spins. A spin that is already going still lands.

You can also use the Enable wheel and Disable wheel Flow steps, for example on at stream start and off at stream end.

Announce the result

There are two ways to post the winner to chat:

• The Wheel landed trigger fires every time any wheel lands, including spins from the page. Pick a wheel, or leave it empty for any wheel. Its outputs are the wheel's name and the winner.
• The Spin wheel step's then connection continues once that one spin has landed.

Use one or the other. Wiring both posts the result twice.

Add a short Sleep before you announce. Your stream runs a few seconds behind chat, and the Sleep stops chat from spoiling the result.

Flow steps

Step	What it does
Spin wheel	Spins a wheel. Outputs Spun, Reason and Winner.
Add to bank	Adds points to an earned wheel's bank.
Reset wheel	Brings back every greyed out option.
Enable wheel	Turns a wheel on.
Disable wheel	Turns a wheel off.
Wheel landed	A trigger that fires when a wheel lands.

Each step has a Wheel setting where you pick which wheel it uses.

Who can do what

By default:

• Moderators can spin, grey out options and reset wheels. This is the Run the wheel permission.
• Editors can create, edit, enable and disable wheels, and set the bank. This is the Manage wheels permission.

Change either on the Permissions page.

Troubleshooting

The Spin button is greyed out

The page tells you why. It will be one of these:

• This wheel is turned off. Turn on the Enabled switch.
• Wait for the current spin to finish. A spin or its result hold is still going.
• Every option is greyed out. Reset the wheel. Press Reset.

A Flow's spin did nothing

Look at the Spin wheel step's Reason output. It says why the wheel did not spin:

Reason	What it means
disabled	The wheel is turned off.
busy	A spin or its result hold is still going.
allGreyed	Every option is greyed out. Reset the wheel.
emptyBank	The earned wheel has no banked spins. Add to the bank first.

You can check Spun with an If to do something else when the wheel does not spin, such as refunding a redeem.

My refund did not happen

Check that the reward was created in Community, and that Skip Request Queue is turned off. Twitch does not let Community cancel redemptions of rewards made anywhere else.

The overlay shows nothing

If the widget is on Any wheel, it only shows while a wheel spins. Pick a wheel in the widget's Wheel setting to keep it on screen.

See also

• Flows to fill a bank or spin from a redeem
• Channel Points
• Widgets
• Permissions