pickahat ENESPT

Secret Santa generator

Type the names, press Draw, and send each person their own link. Each link shows only that person’s match — and nobody’s email is needed.

How to hand out the matches

How it works

  1. Type everyone’s name, one per line (at least three people). Add a wish after a colon if you know it: “Ana: books, tea”.
  2. Optional: list people who shouldn’t draw each other — a couple, a household — and add a budget, a date and a note.
  3. Press Draw. Send each person their private link by message, or pass one phone around the room.
  4. Each person opens their link and taps to see who they give a present to.

What it does

No sign-up, no emails
Nobody has to create an account or hand over an email address. You send the links in the chat you already use.
No list of matches on a server
The draw happens in your browser and is kept there, so you can send a link again. Each match travels inside its own link, after the # sign, which browsers never send to a server — there is no list of who-gives-to-whom on our side. Our server keeps, under a random number with no name attached, each person’s own wish list, whether their link was opened and the anonymous questions; and, only if you make an organiser link, the draw locked with a key we never see.
A wish with each name
Write a wish next to a name and it appears on the link of the person buying for them — no wish-list site to sign up to.
Couples and households kept apart
Say who shouldn’t draw each other. You can also rule out two people drawing each other, so the gifts go round as a chain.
A fair draw
Every valid arrangement is equally likely, and the draw doesn’t favour the first names on the list. Only when the rules leave very few ways to match everyone does a search find one instead.
Pass-the-phone mode
Everyone in the same room? Each person taps their name on one phone, sees their match, and hides it before passing it on.

Questions

Can the organiser see who got whom?

The draw never shows you a match. A late join or leave does tell you one: whose link changed, and so who now buys for the newcomer (or who bought for the person who left). And the links are not locked: whoever holds a link can open it, and anyone technical could read the match inside it. So the organiser should send each link only to its person and not open the others. If the organiser is playing too, use pass-the-phone mode: each person sees only their own match, a name already seen stays locked after a reload, and once everyone has seen theirs the phone forgets the matches (until then they sit in this browser’s storage, where someone technical could read them).

What if someone loses their link?

Open this page again in the same browser: your last draw is kept here, with every link, until you press “Forget this draw”. You can also download all the links as a file right after the draw.

How do I keep couples apart?

In “Keep apart”, write each couple or household on its own line, names separated by commas: “Ana, Luis”. Nobody on a line draws anyone else on that line.

Can we add wishes?

Two ways. You can type a wish after a name with a colon — “Luis: a good novel, size M socks”. Or each person writes their own wish list on their link, and changes it any time until the day; the person buying for them sees it the next time they open their link, or at once with “Check again”. The note is for everyone: the budget rules, the place, the time.

Why does it say the draw is impossible?

The rules leave no way to match everyone — for example, three people who all must be kept apart. Remove a rule or add people.

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