Use OCR to search for text in your library of downloaded memes

meme_search.py

#!/usr/env/bin python3

try:
    from PIL import Image
except ImportError:
    import Image

import os
import mimetypes
import sys
import subprocess

import pytesseract


def get_img_paths(meme_dirs):
    for meme_dir in meme_dirs:
        for root, dirs, files in os.walk(meme_dir):
            for file in files:
                mtype = mimetypes.guess_type(file)[0]
                if mtype and mtype.startswith("image/"):
                    yield os.path.join(root, file)


DEFAULT_MEME_DIRS = [
    # Put paths here where you keep your memes
]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    query = sys.argv[1]
    meme_dirs = sys.argv[2:] or DEFAULT_MEME_DIRS

    for img_path in get_img_paths(meme_dirs):
        img = Image.open(img_path)
        text = pytesseract.image_to_string(img, config="--oem 3 --psm 6").lower()
        if query in text:
            print(f"===== {img_path} =====")
            print(text)
            # on macOS, this opens the image in Preview
            subprocess.run(["open", img_path])