6 Best Christmas Apps to Simplify Holiday Planning
Christmas shopping, cooking, event planning, and organizing takes a lot of time and effort. Explore our collection of the best Christmas preparation apps to keep the holiday spirit alive and take care of everything without feeling overwhelmed.
Turn your phone into a personal Christmas assistant. From gift exchange games and gift sourcing to cooking ideas and party planning, we’ve prepared a list of the best apps for holiday planning to help you organize a perfect celebration this year.
MySanta: The Secret Santa App
MySanta is a convenient app for organizing your Secret Santa exchange with family, and friends. It is also suitable for large gift exchanges at work: 100 and even 500 participants are not a problem! Create a new game and invite players in minutes, set a gift budget, and decide how you will exchange presents – in person or by mail. Plus, the game host can track gifts to ensure that all participants have bought a present for the assigned player. Here are the two ways to draw names with the MySanta app.
Quick game
Draw names in seconds without email. All participants must be in one room. Add the names of players and draw names. Each player takes the phone in turn and sees to whom they should buy a present.
Online game
Sign up and create the Secret Santa exchange with wishlists, anonymous chats, reminders, and more. Here’s how it works:
- Create a new game and decide how to exchange presents – by mail or in person. Share a link or QR code so that all participants can join in.
- Set the gift budget and deadline for buying gifts.
- Players join the game via the link and share their gift suggestions.
- All participants send their gifts by mail or delivery service (if players live far away from each other) or bring them to the Christmas party.
Key features
- Personalized wishlists – players can add items from online retailers and explore gift ideas from our curated lists. You can use the wishlist feature separately even if you don’t play Secret Santa – explore our personalized gift suggestions and share your wishlist with everyone online.
- Anonymous chats – not sure what to give to your assigned person? Talk to them anonymously to learn more about their interests, preferences, and wishes.
- Set exceptions – if some people in your group don’t get along well, you can exclude them so they don’t give to each other.
Platforms: MySanta is available for iOS, Android, and as a web application.
Price: Free; PRO plan starting at $9.
Christmas Gift List Tracker
Christmas Gift List Tracker is an essential app for smart Christmas spending. It will help you plan and buy presents for everyone on your list, ensuring that you don’t go over budget.
Create a list of people to whom you’ll give presents this Christmas. You can add gift ideas for everyone on your list, set the status for each present, and assign a budget for each giftee. With interactive pie charts, it’s easier and more fun to track your gift spending. If you’re stuck with gift ideas, you can draw inspiration from in-app curated gift lists.
Key features
- Smart gift budgeting – assign an individual budget to each recipient or set an overall budget for gifts. Plus, you can organize recipients into groups to see how much you spend on each one. Your spending is shown via graphs and charts, which makes the app comfortable to use.
- Collaborative gift lists – share your list with family members or friends to collaborate. This feature is perfect when you want to give a present to someone from a family or a group of coworkers.
- Passcode protection – set a password for your list to keep it secure. Your lists and progress are synced across all devices.
Platforms: Christmas Gift List Tracker is available for iOS.
Price: Free
Any.do
Any.do is a simple task management app that will come in handy this holiday season. Choosing and buying gifts, decorating a Christmas tree, sending cards, party planning, grocery shopping – the number of things to do can overwhelm you. With Any.do, you can manage all tasks and to-do lists in one place.
The app has all the essential features of a task management app, including a daily planner, to-do list, and calendar. Advanced features include color tags to organize your tasks by urgency, subtasks, and an inbound AI assistant that suggests tasks for your list. Its minimalist interface makes it convenient to use, and with reminders, you won’t overlook anything important.
Key features
- Calendar integration – your tasks from Any.do integrate with your iCloud or Google Calendar. View all tasks in one place, and set time-based and location reminders.
- Color tags – use color tags to mark high-priority tasks and filter them out from the rest. You can customize color labels and create a system that works for you.
- Collaboration on tasks – the platform offers a collaborative workspace where you can work on projects with family members or coworkers. Great for planning a family gathering or workplace party!
Platforms: Any.do is available for iOS, Android, and as a desktop app.
Price: Free; $4.99 for premium features.
Kitchen Stories
Christmas is the time to treat your loved ones to delicious cookies and impress your guests with a new recipe. Kitchen Stories is a cooking app with 10,000+ recipes that cater to all tastes and preferences. To get started, choose the recipe and activate the cooking mode to see step-by-step instructions with photos. Recipes also feature HD videos to help you boost your skills.
In addition, you can join the Kitchen Stories community where people share their recipes. Add favorite recipes to your cookbook so you don’t miss them.
Key features
- Step-by-step instructions – cooking guides make holiday meal preparation easy even for beginners. Follow step-by-step instructions with photos and videos to do everything right.
- Caters to specific tastes – if you prefer healthy meals, are a vegan, or are looking for something low-carb, you’ll find the right recipe here.
- Shopping lists – add missing ingredients to the shopping list so that you have all the ingredients for cooking.
Platforms: The Kitchen Stories app is available for Android and iOS.
Price: Free; €5,99 for the Plus plan.
Heads Up!
Heads Up is a simple app with charades that will keep your guests entertained. The game is interactive and suitable for all ages. Here’s how it works: choose the category (such as animals, celebrities, or movies) and hold up the smartphone to your forehead. Your family and guests give you clues to help you guess the word on the screen.
If you haven’t had much time to plan interactive games, this app is a great solution for keeping people engaged and having fun.
Key features
- 100+ themed decks – with a variety of categories, you can cater to everyone’s interests and keep guests entertained for hours.
- Various difficulty levels – play with kids or charade lovers, create custom categories, and use engaging trivia cards.
Platforms: Heads Up is available for iOS and Android.
Price: Free for kids; $1.99 for adults.
TimeTree
Planning an office party or a family gathering doesn’t have to be a mess. TimeTree is a shared calendar app that allows you to coordinate party plans with other participants. You can discuss plans, add notes and comments to events, and even run polls for the best dates and times of the upcoming celebration.
The app helps you effectively plan and organize events, discussing all steps of preparation with others in one app. You can create separate calendars for different events, assign tasks to others, and integrate with other calendar apps on your phone.
Key features
- All events in one app – coordinate all holiday parties in one app and coordinate schedules with other people involved.
- Stay on track with notifications – the app will notify you when someone creates a new event or updates an existing one.
- Simplified coordination – forget about multiple chats in messengers, screenshots, and communication issues! With TimeTree, you can stay on track with holiday preparations.
Platforms: The app is available for iOS and Android.
Price: Free; $4.49 for Premium.
FAQ's
What are some good budgeting apps to save money on Christmas shopping?
The Christmas Gift List Tracker app mentioned above can help you stay on track with your holiday spending. You can create a Christmas budget, track your spending in real-time, set gift limits for each person, and so on. Another helpful tool is ShopSavvy - it compares product price across thousands of retailers to help you find the best deals.
What is the best app for organizing Christmas gift exchanges?
With the MySanta app, you can organize a seamless Secret Santa or White Elephant exchange, no matter the number of players. The app handles name drawing, wish list creation, and gift tracking. Features also include setting gift budget, excluding certain people from gifting each other (for example, couples) and anonymous chats.
Are there any AI-powered Christmas planning apps?
Some planning apps (such as Any.d0) have an inbound AI assistant that gives suggestions for to-do list writing. You can also use tools like ChatGPT to streamline your Christmas planning and cooking, but make sure to double-check important information as AI tools make mistakes.
