🔥 MediaCrawler - Social Media Platform Crawler 🕷️

July 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

BrowserAct is a browser automation tool designed for AI Agents, featuring anti-bot interception handling, human handoff when tasks get stuck, multi-task parallel isolation, and multi-account independent management, helping Agents complete real-world web tasks more reliably.

Disclaimer:

Please use this repository for learning purposes only ⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️, Web scraping illegal cases

All content in this repository is for learning and reference purposes only, and commercial use is prohibited. No person or organization may use the content of this repository for illegal purposes or infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of others. The web scraping technology involved in this repository is only for learning and research, and may not be used for large-scale crawling of other platforms or other illegal activities. This repository assumes no legal responsibility for any legal liability arising from the use of the content of this repository. By using the content of this repository, you agree to all terms and conditions of this disclaimer.

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📖 Project Introduction

A powerful multi-platform social media data collection tool that supports crawling public information from mainstream platforms including Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Weibo, Tieba, Zhihu, and more.

🔧 Technical Principles

Core Technology: Based on Playwright browser automation framework for login and maintaining login state
No JS Reverse Engineering Required: Uses browser context environment with preserved login state to obtain signature parameters through JS expressions
Advantages: No need to reverse complex encryption algorithms, significantly lowering the technical barrier

✨ Features

Platform	Keyword Search	Specific Post ID Crawling	Secondary Comments	Specific Creator Homepage	Login State Cache	IP Proxy Pool	Generate Comment Word Cloud
Xiaohongshu	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Douyin	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Kuaishou	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Bilibili	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Weibo	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Tieba	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Zhihu	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

MediaCrawlerPro Major Release! Open source is not easy, welcome to subscribe and support!

Focus on learning mature project architectural design, not just crawling technology. The code design philosophy of the Pro version is equally worth in-depth study!

MediaCrawlerPro core advantages over the open-source version:

🎯 Core Feature Upgrades

✅ Content Deconstruction Agent (New feature)
✅ Resume crawling functionality (Key feature)
✅ Multi-account + IP proxy pool support (Key feature)
✅ Remove Playwright dependency, easier to use
✅ Complete Linux environment support

🏗️ Architectural Design Optimization

✅ Code refactoring optimization, more readable and maintainable (decoupled JS signature logic)
✅ Enterprise-level code quality, suitable for building large-scale crawler projects
✅ Perfect architectural design, high scalability, greater source code learning value

🎁 Additional Features

✅ Social media video downloader desktop app (suitable for learning full-stack development)
✅ Multi-platform homepage feed recommendations (HomeFeed)
AI Agent based on comment analysis is under development 🚀🚀

Click to view: MediaCrawlerPro Project Homepage for more information

🚀 Quick Start

💡 Open source is not easy, if this project helps you, please give a ⭐ Star to support!

📋 Prerequisites

🚀 uv Installation (Recommended)

Before proceeding with the next steps, please ensure that uv is installed on your computer:

Installation Guide: uv Official Installation Guide
Verify Installation: Enter the command uv --version in the terminal. If the version number is displayed normally, the installation was successful
Recommendation Reason: uv is currently the most powerful Python package management tool, with fast speed and accurate dependency resolution

🟢 Node.js Installation

The project depends on Node.js, please download and install from the official website:

Download Link: https://nodejs.org/en/download/
Version Requirement: >= 16.0.0

📦 Python Package Installation

# Enter project directory
cd MediaCrawler

# Use uv sync command to ensure consistency of python version and related dependency packages
uv sync

🌐 Browser Driver Installation

# Install browser driver
uv run playwright install

💡 Tip: MediaCrawler now supports using playwright to connect to your local Chrome browser, solving some issues caused by Webdriver.

Currently, xhs and dy are available using CDP mode to connect to local browsers. If needed, check the configuration items in config/base_config.py.

🚀 Run Crawler Program

# The project does not enable comment crawling mode by default. If you need comments, please modify the ENABLE_GET_COMMENTS variable in config/base_config.py
# Other supported options can also be viewed in config/base_config.py with Chinese comments

# Read keywords from configuration file to search related posts and crawl post information and comments
uv run main.py --platform xhs --lt qrcode --type search

# Read specified post ID list from configuration file to get information and comment information of specified posts
uv run main.py --platform xhs --lt qrcode --type detail

# Open corresponding APP to scan QR code for login

# For other platform crawler usage examples, execute the following command to view
uv run main.py --help

WebUI Support

🖥️ WebUI Visual Operation Interface

MediaCrawler provides a web-based visual operation interface, allowing you to easily use crawler features without command line.

Development (recommended)

For development, you need to start both the backend API service and the frontend Vite dev server:

# Terminal 1: start API server (default port 8080)
uv run uvicorn api.main:app --port 8080 --reload

# Terminal 2: start frontend dev server
cd webui
npm install
npm run dev        # starts on port 5173 by default and proxies /api to 8080

After successful startup, visit http://localhost:5173/ to open the WebUI interface.

On first launch, an environment check is performed (calls /api/env/check), so make sure the backend service is running. If the check fails, you can click "Skip Check" to bypass it temporarily.

Build for Production

If you want the API server to serve the WebUI static assets directly, build the frontend first:

cd webui
npm install
npm run build      # outputs to api/webui/

Then start only the API server:

uv run uvicorn api.main:app --port 8080 --reload

After successful startup, visit http://localhost:8080 to open the WebUI interface.

WebUI Features

Visualize crawler parameter configuration (platform, login method, crawling type, etc.)
Real-time view of crawler running status and logs
Data preview and export

Interface Preview

🔗 Using Python native venv environment management (Not recommended)

Create and activate Python virtual environment

If crawling Douyin and Zhihu, you need to install nodejs environment in advance, version greater than or equal to: 16

# Enter project root directory
cd MediaCrawler

# Create virtual environment
# My python version is: 3.9.6, the libraries in requirements.txt are based on this version
# If using other python versions, the libraries in requirements.txt may not be compatible, please resolve on your own
python -m venv venv

# macOS & Linux activate virtual environment
source venv/bin/activate

# Windows activate virtual environment
venv\Scripts\activate

Install dependency libraries

pip install -r requirements.txt

Install playwright browser driver

playwright install

Run crawler program (native environment)

# The project does not enable comment crawling mode by default. If you need comments, please modify the ENABLE_GET_COMMENTS variable in config/base_config.py
# Other supported options can also be viewed in config/base_config.py with Chinese comments

# Read keywords from configuration file to search related posts and crawl post information and comments
python main.py --platform xhs --lt qrcode --type search

# Read specified post ID list from configuration file to get information and comment information of specified posts
python main.py --platform xhs --lt qrcode --type detail

# Open corresponding APP to scan QR code for login

# For other platform crawler usage examples, execute the following command to view
python main.py --help

💾 Data Storage

MediaCrawler supports multiple data storage methods, including CSV, JSON, JSONL, Excel, SQLite, and MySQL databases.

📖 For detailed usage instructions, please see: Data Storage Guide

🚀 MediaCrawlerPro Major Release 🚀! More features, better architectural design!

💬 Discussion Groups

WeChat Discussion Group: Click to join
Bilibili Account: Follow me, sharing AI and crawler technology knowledge

TikHub.io provides 900+ highly stable data interfaces, covering 14+ mainstream domestic and international platforms including TK, DY, XHS, Y2B, Ins, X, etc. Supports multi-dimensional public data APIs for users, content, products, comments, etc., with 40M+ cleaned structured datasets. Use invitation code cfzyejV9 to register and recharge, and get an additional \$2 bonus.

Atlas Cloud is a full-modal AI inference platform that gives developers a single AI API to access video generation, image generation, and LLM APIs. Instead of managing multiple vendor integrations, you connect once and get unified access to 300+ curated models across all modalities. Check out Atlas Cloud's new coding plan promotion for more budget-friendly API access.

Become a sponsor and showcase your product here, getting massive exposure daily!

Contact Information:

WeChat: relakkes
Email: relakkes@gmail.com

📚 Other

FAQ: MediaCrawler Complete Documentation
Crawler Beginner Tutorial: CrawlerTutorial Free Tutorial
News Crawler Open Source Project: NewsCrawlerCollection

⭐ Star Trend Chart

If this project helps you, please give a ⭐ Star to support and let more people see MediaCrawler!

📚 References

Xiaohongshu Signature Repository: Cloxl's xhs signature repository
Xiaohongshu Client: ReaJason's xhs repository
SMS Forwarding: SmsForwarder reference repository
Intranet Penetration Tool: ngrok official documentation

Disclaimer

1. Project Purpose and Nature

This project (hereinafter referred to as "this project") was created as a technical research and learning tool, aimed at exploring and learning network data collection technologies. This project focuses on research of data crawling technologies for social media platforms, intended to provide learners and researchers with technical exchange purposes.

2. Legal Compliance Statement

The project developer (hereinafter referred to as "developer") solemnly reminds users to strictly comply with relevant laws and regulations of the People's Republic of China when downloading, installing and using this project, including but not limited to the "Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China", "Counter-Espionage Law of the People's Republic of China" and all applicable national laws and policies. Users shall bear all legal responsibilities that may arise from using this project.

3. Usage Purpose Restrictions

This project is strictly prohibited from being used for any illegal purposes or non-learning, non-research commercial activities. This project may not be used for any form of illegal intrusion into other people's computer systems, nor may it be used for any activities that infringe upon others' intellectual property rights or other legitimate rights and interests. Users should ensure that their use of this project is purely for personal learning and technical research, and may not be used for any form of illegal activities.

4. Disclaimer

The developer has made every effort to ensure the legitimacy and security of this project, but assumes no responsibility for any form of direct or indirect losses that may arise from users' use of this project. Including but not limited to any data loss, equipment damage, legal litigation, etc. caused by using this project.

5. Intellectual Property Statement

The intellectual property rights of this project belong to the developer. This project is protected by copyright law and international copyright treaties as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. Users may download and use this project under the premise of complying with this statement and relevant laws and regulations.