Can someone be assigned to give a gift to themselves?

No. The algorithm always excludes self-assignments, so every participant is matched with someone else as their gift recipient.

How do exclusion rules work?

Each rule is written as Giver:Receiver and prevents that giver from being matched with that receiver. This is handy for keeping couples, family members, or rivals from drawing each other.

What if the exclusions cannot all be satisfied?

If your rules are too restrictive to allow any valid assignment, the tool reports that it could not satisfy them and asks you to remove some exclusions and try again.

Why does it reveal names one at a time?

To keep the draw secret. Each participant can tap their own Reveal button to see only their recipient, so no one accidentally sees the whole list at once.

Is anything saved or sent online?

No. The pairing runs entirely in your browser and nothing is uploaded or stored. Reload the page and the names and assignments are gone.

Secret Santa Pairer — Gera Tools

Organise a fair, private gift exchange

Drawing names from a hat is fine until someone picks themselves or two partners get matched and ruin the surprise. This Secret Santa Pairer handles both: it guarantees no one is assigned to themselves and lets you add exclusion rules so specific pairings never happen. Reveal assignments privately, one name at a time, so the secret stays safe.

How it works

The tool reads your participant list, splitting on newlines and commas and removing duplicates and blanks. It then searches for a valid assignment using randomized backtracking: it repeatedly shuffles the recipient pool and greedily assigns each giver the first available recipient who is neither themselves nor blocked by an exclusion rule. Exclusions are parsed from lines in Giver:Receiver form, where that giver is forbidden from being matched with that receiver. If a shuffle leads to a dead end, the tool retries with a fresh shuffle up to several hundred times; if no valid assignment exists under your constraints, it tells you the rules are too tight rather than producing an invalid result.

Tips and notes

For a typical exchange you only need the participant list — leave the exclusions box empty. Add exclusions sparingly, since each one reduces the number of valid arrangements; a long list of rules on a small group can make a valid draw impossible. To run the exchange, have each person come to the screen and tap the Reveal button beside their own name so only they see their recipient. Everything is computed locally in your browser, so the assignments never leave your device.