AI crawler · Apple
Applebot: what it is and how to block it
Applebot crawls the web for search in Siri, Spotlight, and Safari. Apple says its data may also be used to train Apple's foundation models; to opt out of training alone, use Applebot-Extended.
BrandVector Editorial · Last verified Oct 8, 2026
- Operator
- Apple
- Type
- Search
- robots.txt token
Applebot- Follows robots.txt
- Yes, per Apple
- IP ranges
- Published
- Blocked by name
- 0.6% of top sites
What is Applebot?
Applebot is Apple's search crawler: it indexes pages for search results. In Apple's words:
“The data crawled by Applebot is used to power various features, such as the search technology integrated into many user experiences in Appleʼs ecosystem including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari.”
“The data crawled by Applebot may also be used to help train Apple foundation models powering generative AI features across Apple products, including Apple Intelligence, Services, and Developer Tools.”
“Web publishers can opt out of their content being used in these broad world knowledge answers by applying the nosnippet meta tag to specific content.”
“If robots instructions don't mention Applebot but mention Googlebot, the Apple robot will follow Googlebot instructions.”
Applebot user agent string
Apple documents these user agent strings for Applebot:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)
In robots.txt, use the token Applebot, not the full string. Crawlers match on the token, and version numbers in the full string can change.
How many websites block Applebot?
In our Oct 8, 2026 check of 817 of the most-visited websites, 0.6% block Applebot by name for their whole site (5 sites).
| robots.txt rule for Applebot | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Blocks the whole site by name | 5 | 0.6% |
| Blocks part of the site by name | 29 | 3.5% |
| Names it but doesn't block it | 7 | 0.9% |
| Blocked only by a catch-all (*) rule | 22 | 2.7% |
For comparison, 0.1% of the same sites block Googlebot by name. The sites are the top 1,000 origins in the Chrome UX Report for August 2026; see how we measured.
How to block Applebot in robots.txt
Add this group to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain to block Applebot from your whole site:
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
To block only part of your site, list those paths instead:
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /private/
A group that names Applebot replaces your User-agent: * rules for it entirely (RFC 9309). If your catch-all group blocks paths that Applebot should also stay out of, repeat them in its group. To let Applebot in while a catch-all rule blocks others:
User-agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Applebot Allow: /
“Applebot respects standard robots.txt directives in general search crawls that are targeted at Applebot.”
What happens if you block Applebot?
“Enabling Applebot in robots.txt allows website content to appear in search results for Apple users around the world in these products.”
How to verify requests from Applebot
Apple publishes the IP addresses Applebot uses. Check a request's IP address against that list before trusting its user agent, which any client can fake.
“Traffic coming from Applebot is generally identified by using reverse DNS in the *.applebot.apple.com domain.”
Other Apple crawlers
- Applebot-Extended · Control token
See every AI crawler and how often top sites block it
Sources
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