Random URL from List
Pick one URL at random from a list — handy for tab roulette.
Overview
The Random URL from List tool picks one URL at random from a pasted list, opening it immediately or just returning the chosen line. It is a no-frills "tab roulette" for picking the next thing to read from a saved list, surfacing a forgotten bookmark or rotating through a set of demo URLs in a presentation.
The tool is aimed at procrastinators with a long reading list, demo presenters cycling through example sites, podcast hosts picking a show-prep article and educators rotating examples in a class. Long-tail searches like "random url picker from list", "tab roulette online tool" and "pick random link from text list" all resolve here.
How it works
Paste a list of URLs — one per line, blank lines and comments (#) ignored. The tool parses each line, validates it as a syntactically-correct absolute URL (scheme http or https, host required) and discards malformed entries. It then draws a uniformly random index using the OS cryptographic random source and returns the corresponding URL.
A "no repeats" mode tracks recently-picked URLs in browser local storage and excludes them from the next draw until the list is exhausted. This is useful for "read once and move on" rotations — say, working through a backlog of saved articles without re-reading the ones you already opened.
Examples
3 URLs in, click → second one picked, opens in new tab
50-article reading list → fresh pick on every click, no-repeats avoids dupes
Comments and blanks ignored → only valid URLs in the draw pool
Invalid line "not-a-url" → reported and excluded
FAQ
Does it follow the URL or just pick it?
By default it just returns the chosen URL. Toggle "open immediately" to launch it in a new tab.
What counts as a valid URL?
Absolute URLs with http or https scheme and a non-empty host. Relative URLs and other schemes are skipped.
Does the tool track my picks?
The "no repeats" mode stores recent picks in your browser's local storage only. Nothing leaves your device.
Can I weight some URLs higher?
Repeat a URL on multiple lines and it has proportionally higher odds. There is no explicit weight field.
Is it really random?
Yes. The pick uses the OS cryptographic random source with rejection sampling for an unbiased index, so each URL has equal odds.