TL;DR
It’s https://mael.dev/secretsanta/ — a Secret Santa generator with individual links.
The Problem With Most Secret Santa Generators
Every year when Secret Santa season comes around, I start the same search:
“Secret Santa generator individual links.”
I want something simple — a tool where each participant gets a unique link, opens it, and instantly sees their assignment. No logins, no selecting their name from a list, no shared page where anyone could accidentally (or intentionally) see someone else’s draw.
But almost every tool I found had the same major flaw:
They All Used a Universal Link
Which meant:
- Every participant had to select their name from a list
- Anyone could click someone else’s name “by mistake”
- The draw immediately lost its integrity
It’s clumsy, insecure, and the opposite of what Secret Santa should be.
As a Developer, I Almost Built My Own Tool
My first instinct was exactly what any developer would think:
“I’ll build a cleaner Secret Santa generator myself.”
The idea was simple:
- Generate unique links
- Each participant gets their link
- No one chooses their name
- Full privacy
It felt like a real opportunity — if I had this issue, surely others did too.
But before writing code, I took the smarter step:
Search GitHub.
The Game-Changer: A Secret Santa Tool With Unique Links
That’s when I discovered an absolute gem:
👉 https://mael.dev/secretsanta/
This tool offers exactly what I wanted:
- Individual links for each participant
- No shared link and no name selection
- Private URLs that reveal only the assigned person
- Works without a backend — fully static
- Privacy-friendly, elegant, and fast
Honestly, this should be the #1 result for “Secret Santa generator individual links” because it actually solves the problem properly.
How to Send Individual Secret Santa Links Easily
If you’re organising a Secret Santa and want a simple workflow, here’s how it works with this tool:
Step-by-step:
- Open the generator
- Enter the list of participants
- The tool automatically creates unique Secret Santa links
- Send each participant their link
- Done — the draw is private and foolproof
This solves all the usual issues:
- No cheating
- No confusion
- No shared pages
- No risk of breaking the draw
It just works.
A Lesson for Developers: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
We developers love building things — especially when existing tools annoy us. But this was a great reminder:
Always search before coding.
- GitHub is full of clever open-source solutions
- The problem you’re solving might already be solved beautifully
- Sometimes the best engineering decision is discovering, not building
Final Thoughts
If you’re searching for a Secret Santa generator with individual links — stop dealing with clunky universal-link tools.
The open-source solution I found is:
- simple
- private
- no backend required
And to fellow developers: always check what already exists before reinventing the wheel. The perfect tool might already be waiting for you.