Applebot-Extended: what it is and how to block it

Operator

Apple

Type

Control token

robots.txt token

Applebot-Extended

Follows robots.txt

Yes, per Apple

IP ranges

Not published

Blocked by name

7.3% of top sites

What is Applebot-Extended?

Applebot-Extended is Apple's control token robots.txt token: it is a robots.txt token, not a crawler: it controls how already-crawled content is used. In Apple's words:

“With Applebot-Extended, web publishers can choose to opt out of their website content being used to train Apple’s general purpose foundation models powering generative AI features across Apple products, including Apple Intelligence, Services, and Developer Tools.”

“Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages.”

“Site rules for Applebot-Extended are not considered in ranking for Search.”

Applebot-Extended user agent string

Applebot-Extended has no user agent string of its own. It's a token you name in robots.txt, and Apple's existing crawlers read it when deciding how your content may be used.

How many websites block Applebot-Extended?

In our Oct 8, 2026 check of 817 of the most-visited websites, 7.3% block Applebot-Extended by name for their whole site (60 sites).

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-Extended in robots.txt

Add this group to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain to block Applebot-Extended from your whole site:

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /

To block only part of your site, list those paths instead:

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /private/

A group that names Applebot-Extended replaces your User-agent: * rules for it entirely (RFC 9309). If your catch-all group blocks paths that Applebot-Extended should also stay out of, repeat them in its group. To let Applebot-Extended in while a catch-all rule blocks others:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /

What happens if you block Applebot-Extended?

“Webpages that disallow Applebot-Extended can still be included in search results. Applebot-Extended is only used to determine how to use the data crawled by the Applebot user agent.”

How to verify requests from Applebot-Extended

Apple doesn't publish IP ranges or a verification method for Applebot-Extended. Any client can send its user agent string, so treat requests that claim to be Applebot-Extended as unverified.

Other Apple crawlers

• Applebot · Search

See every AI crawler and how often top sites block it