PickledBalls

Fair courts for your pickup game.

Pick who's here, tap once, and start playing. PickledBalls turns a pile of players into balanced, no-repeat-partner courts in seconds — pickleball, tennis, or ping pong. No account. Fully offline. Free.

Join the Free Beta →

Built for the person running the game

You're the one who got eight people to a court at the same time. The least the app can do is sort out the matchups. Tap ⚡ Start a Quick Game, choose your players and courts, and you're playing — no spreadsheet, no group-chat math, no clipboard.

What it does

Everything you need to run a fun game — and nothing you don't.

Start in under 30 seconds

Pick your players, set sport, courts, and rounds, and Quick Game drops you straight into a ready-to-play schedule. Close the app mid-game and pick up right where you left off.

📡

Everyone sees their court — live

Playing, not running the show? Set yourself as a Player and type your name once. The organizer's courts, partners, and scores show up live on your phone as the game unfolds. It all happens over the local network in the room: no account, no internet, nothing leaves your devices.

⚖️

Courts that are actually balanced

A Whist-based optimizer tracks every partnership and court visit, so nobody plays with the same partner twice and every court stays evenly loaded. How the algorithm works →

🎛️

Three ways to pair

Random shuffle is free. With Organizer Pro, schedule by skill: Seeded pairs strong with strong, and Balanced snake-drafts by each player's own rating for mixed, competitive courts. Free right now.

👑

Progressive (King's Court)

Flip one toggle for "top gun" play. Tap which side won on each court between rounds — winners climb toward court 1, losers slide down, partners criss-cross. The next round drops in automatically.

🔁

Swap on the fly

Someone shows up late or has to leave? Tap any player to swap them — this round only, or every round from here on.

⏱️

Built-in round timer

Start the round timer with one tap. One-minute warning, then time's up — no second device needed.

📝

Notes & scores

Jot a per-round note, enter scores as you go — or don't. Lineups are always saved either way.

🏓

Pickleball, tennis & ping pong

Singles or doubles, your choice per game. Each sport gets the right court math.

🔗

Pair rules

Mark any two players Never Partners, Always Partners, or Never Same Court. The scheduler honors every rule, every round, automatically.

👥

Your roster, on your phone

Keep your regulars with ratings and notes. Add someone new mid-game and they're instantly available. It all stays on your device.

📚

Game history

Past games and results are kept on-device, so you can look back at how the night went.

✈️

No signal? No problem

Bad gym WiFi, basement courts, the park — scheduling, the timer, scores, and history all work with zero connectivity.

How a game works

Pick players. Tap once. Play.

PickledBalls is built for the way pickup games actually happen. You don't have an ops team — you have a group of people who showed up and courts that need balancing before the warm-up's over. Three taps and you're playing.

1. Pick who's here. Choose players from your roster — or add someone new on the spot. Set the sport, format (singles or doubles), how many courts you've got, and how many rounds you want.

2. Get fair courts. Tap once and a Whist 1-factorization — a provably zero-partner-repeat rotation — lays out every round. Nobody plays with the same partner twice, and every court stays evenly loaded. Pick Random for a casual night, Seeded when the ladder matters, or Balanced for snake-drafted teams. Want "top gun" play instead? Flip on Progressive (King's Court) and tap the winning side each round — winners climb, losers slide, partners criss-cross.

3. Run it from your phone. A round timer, one-tap player swaps, per-round notes, and optional score entry — all on one screen. Hit Complete and every lineup is saved to a game history you can look back on. No laptop, no spreadsheet, no signal required.

Players just watch. Anyone in the group can set themselves as a Player and type their name once. As the organizer runs the game, each player's court, partners, and score appear live on their own phone, so nobody has to crowd around one screen between rounds. It works peer-to-peer over the local network in the room: no account, no internet, nothing leaves your devices.

Set pair rules once. Mark any two players Never Partners, Always Partners, or Never Same Court, and the scheduler obeys them automatically in every game it builds.

Pickleball, tennis, ping pong. Singles or doubles. No account, fully offline, free.

🥠 Crack a pickleball fortune

A little courtside wisdom between sessions — no app required.

250 fortunes · powered by PickleFortunes

Join the free beta

PickledBalls is in free TestFlight beta. It's completely free — all I ask is that you actually run a game with it and tell me what's clunky.

  1. On your iPhone, tap Join the beta below.
  2. It installs Apple's free TestFlight app if you don't have it, then PickledBalls.
  3. Open it, pick Organizer, enter your name, and run a game.
Join the beta on TestFlight →

Requires iPhone running iOS 26 or later. Please test it and send me feedback!

Know someone who runs games?

One tap sends a ready-made invite with the beta link — pick whichever channel fits.