How to Scrape WeChat Friend Signatures with Python and Visualize Them as Word Clouds

This article continues a series on Python web scraping by showing how to retrieve WeChat friends' personal signatures using the itchat library, store the results in a local text file, and then visualize the collected words with a word‑cloud.

Step 1: Use itchat to log in, fetch each contact's signature, and write non‑empty signatures to a file.

Step 2: After the script finishes, the generated text file contains one signature per line, ordered by the contact list. Signatures that are missing are ignored.

Step 3: Verify the file by searching for a known signature, confirming that the data was captured correctly.

Step 4: Create a word‑cloud by loading the text file, specifying a white background image (e.g., a picture of Luffy) and a suitable font, then generating the cloud.

Step 5: Run the visualization script, which may require scanning a QR code for WeChat authorization.

Step 6: The resulting word‑cloud displays frequently used words such as “life”, “effort”, “time”, revealing the optimistic and time‑valuing attitudes of the friends.