Secret Santa Generator

No. Nobody signs up, and the organizer doesn’t need anyone’s email address. Each person’s match travels inside their own link, which you send however you like — WhatsApp, SMS, email, any messaging app — or you print the slips and hand them out.

Every person gives exactly one gift and receives exactly one, and nobody draws themselves. The draw uses your browser’s cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues) to shuffle the names, and reshuffles until the result also respects every exclusion, so every valid arrangement is equally likely. If exclusions leave only a tiny share of arrangements valid, it switches to a step-by-step draw that still picks at random and can still produce any valid arrangement.

Open Wishlists / gift hints and type up to 200 characters for anyone who wants to share ideas, such as “size M, loves tea and puzzles, no candles”. A person’s wishlist is placed only in the link of whoever draws them, so their Secret Santa sees it under the match on the reveal screen and nobody else does; it is also printed on that Secret Santa’s PDF slip. The organizer types the wishlists, so collect them before the draw — the Secret Santa questionnaire makes a printable or chat-ready form for that and condenses each reply into a line that fits. Add them before sending the links: editing one afterwards changes the link of whoever drew that person, and the list shows whose link changed, which gives away who drew them.

After the draw, choose WhatsApp, SMS, Email, Share (on phones and browsers that support it) or Copy, and press the big button: it opens that app with a ready-written message and the person’s link, you pick the person as the recipient and send, and the next person comes up. Each name also has its own buttons, and the list marks who you have sent to. The app opens with no recipient filled in — you choose the chat — so send each link in a private chat with that person, never in a group chat.

Opening a link shows a reveal screen on this page with the person’s name, a Reveal my match button, the person they are buying for, that person’s wishlist, and the budget, date and note. Everything is stored inside the link itself, after the # — a part of the address browsers don’t send to the server when the page loads — so there is no account, no database and nothing to expire. The organizer can take part too: send the links without opening the full list. A link is usually 150 to 450 characters, whatever the size of the group; a 200-character wishlist plus a 200-character note brings it to about 700, or roughly 900 to 1,250 in Cyrillic or Chinese. WhatsApp, email and iMessage handle that fine, but a plain SMS splits long links over several messages, so the page suggests WhatsApp or email once a link passes 900 characters.

Not at a glance. Each link’s contents are scrambled with a random key created for that draw, so no names or wishlists are readable in the address. This is obfuscation, not strong encryption: the key travels in the same link, so someone who knows the format could decode it. Anyone who opens a link sees that one pairing — and only that one — so send each link only to its person.

It copies every person’s link into one list, and each link reveals a match — pasted into a group chat, it would let anyone open everyone’s link. Use it only to keep a private backup for yourself, and still send each person just their own link.

Links never expire, so first ask them to search the chat or email where you sent it. If it’s gone, open this page in the same browser you drew in: with Remember this draw ticked (the default), the page offers to restore your last draw, and you can resend that person’s link — it is exactly the same link as before. If you unticked Remember, pressed Forget, cleared your browser data or used another device, the draw can’t be recovered, because nothing is stored on our side; then either use a copy you kept (Copy all links) or draw again and send everyone their new link, since the old ones still show the old matches.

Nothing is uploaded: names, wishlists and the draw never leave your browser, except inside the links you choose to send. With Remember this draw ticked, the last draw — names, exclusions, wishlists, event details, the pairings and which links you have sent — is kept in this browser’s local storage on your device, so the organizer can resend a lost link. It stays until you untick Remember, press Forget, draw again (which replaces it) or clear the site’s data. Anyone using the same browser profile could restore it and see the draw, so untick Remember on a shared computer.

An exclusion stops a pairing. With Both ways ticked, neither person can draw the other — right for couples, housemates or parents and their children. Untick it for a one-way block, such as each giver → the person they drew last year, so everyone gets someone new while the reverse pairing stays possible.

The generator checks this exactly rather than giving up after a few tries, and tells you why. For example, it reports that one person has been excluded from everyone, that nobody is allowed to draw a certain person, or that a group of people can only draw from a smaller group of names. Remove one of the exclusions it mentions, or add people, and draw again.

Download PDF slips creates one fold-over slip per person, four to an A4 or US Letter page. The person’s name sits at the top; their match, the match’s wishlist, the budget, date and note sit below it, and a patterned flap folds up over them to hide them. A very long wishlist and note together may be shortened to fit. The PDF uses standard Latin fonts: accented letters such as é, ü or ñ print as they are, Cyrillic and Greek are transliterated, other letters lose their accents, and other scripts and emoji are left out — the page lists every change to names, budget and note first (and counts affected wishlists), and a name that can’t be printed becomes a blank line to write in by hand.

Yes. Pick the currency next to the budget — $, €, £, ₹, ₺, CA$, A$, NZ$, kr, zł, ¥ and more, or None — and type the amount, such as 25, 20-30 or up to 25. The symbol is added in the usual place (“$25”, “300 kr”); if you type a symbol yourself, such as “£20 max”, your text is kept as it is.

Yes, as long as no exclusion forbids it: Anna can draw Ben while Ben draws Anna. Many groups are happy with that. If you would rather avoid it, check the full list and, if a mutual pair appears, add a one-way exclusion for it and draw again.