Create a Heart‑Shaped WeChat Word Cloud with Python: Step‑by‑Step Guide

On the occasion of Qixi (Chinese Valentine’s Day), a Python utility is presented that captures real‑time WeChat conversations and visualizes them as a heart‑shaped word cloud.

Real‑time WeChat Chat Monitoring (wxpy)

Run wx_word.exe to display a QR code for login. After scanning, input the WeChat friend’s remark name. The program then listens to the friend’s messages and saves them locally, ensuring no data leakage.

Generating the Word Cloud

When you want to create the cloud, execute the parse.py script (requires Python 3+). The script processes the saved chat records and produces a heart‑shaped word cloud.

Environment Requirements

Windows computer

Python 3 or higher installed

Necessary Python libraries (wxpy, jieba, wordcloud, matplotlib, etc.)

wxpy – Capture Real‑time Messages

# Get friend chat
@bot.register(my_friend)
def print_others(msg):
    # Output the captured message
    if msg.text:
        f = open('data.txt', 'a')
        f.write(msg.text + '
')
        f.close()
        embed()

jieba – Chinese Word Segmentation

# encoding=utf-8
import jieba
# Full mode example
seg_list = jieba.cut("我来到北京清华大学", cut_all=True)
print("Full Mode: ", "/ ".join(seg_list))
# Precise mode example
seg_list = jieba.cut("我来到北京清华大学", cut_all=False)
print(", ".join(seg_list))
# Search engine mode example
seg_list = jieba.cut_for_search("小明硕士毕业于中国科学院计算所，后在日本京都大学深造")
print(", ".join(seg_list))

wordcloud – Generate the Cloud

# wordcloud.WordCloud parameters example
from wordcloud import WordCloud
wc = WordCloud(font_path=None, width=400, height=200, margin=2,
               ranks_only=None, prefer_horizontal=0.9, mask=None,
               scale=1, color_func=None, max_words=200,
               min_font_size=4, stopwords=None, random_state=None,
               background_color='black', max_font_size=None,
               font_step=1, mode='RGB', relative_scaling=0.5,
               regexp=None, collocations=True, colormap=None,
               normalize_plurals=True)

Heart‑Shaped Word Cloud Creation

First, load a heart‑shaped mask image:

# Generate the cloud
pic = imread('./xin.jpg')
wc = WordCloud(mask=pic, font_path='./simhei.ttf', width=500, height=300,
               background_color='white')
wc.generate(word)
wc.to_file(os.path.join(d, "wechat_cloud.png"))
plt.imshow(wc)
plt.axis('off')
plt.show()

The resulting image shows a personalized word cloud shaped like a heart, visualizing the most frequent words from the captured chat history.