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

The article continues a series on Python crawling and data mining, focusing on extracting WeChat friends' signatures using the itchat library and visualizing the collected text with a word cloud.

Step 1: A Python script based on itchat logs into WeChat, iterates over the contact list, retrieves each friend's signature (if present), and writes the signatures to a local text file.

After execution, the generated text file contains one signature per line. The first line is the author’s own signature, followed by signatures ordered according to the WeChat address book; contacts without a signature are skipped.

To verify a specific friend's signature, you can search the text file for the known phrase (e.g., "得之安然、失之坦然、处之泰然、顺其自然、争其必然！") and confirm its presence.

Step 4: The script then creates a word‑cloud image from the signatures. It requires a white‑background mask image (the example uses a Luffy silhouette) and a suitable font file.

Running the program prompts a QR‑code login for WeChat authorization. After successful login, the script processes the signatures and generates the word cloud.

The final word‑cloud image highlights frequent words such as "life", "effort", "time", and "we", reflecting the generally optimistic and time‑valuing attitudes of the friends' signatures.