What it does
Applebot is Apple's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Powers Spotlight/Siri/Safari search. UA embeds 'Applebot/x.y' inside a full Safari-like string. WARNING for pattern-writers: 'Applebot' is a substring of 'Applebot-Extended' — order/anchor patterns accordingly.
Full UA: not captured in our July 2026 roster review — match log hits on the token Applebot (case-insensitive substring) and verify by IP before acting.
How to verify a hit is really Applebot
Verification method (July 2026): rDNS *.applebot.apple.com + published CIDR list: https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json (fetched live 2026-08-22)
Strongest available check: the vendor publishes the crawler's egress IPs. Fetch the list, then confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a UA match from any other IP is a spoofer.
User-agent strings are freely spoofed, so a UA match alone proves nothing. Full step-by-step method: verify by IP.
Allow or block in robots.txt
Match the exact token Applebot in robots.txt:
# Block Applebot site-wide
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /# Explicitly allow Applebot
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /For the allow-search-block-training combined pattern (and the Allow-directive gotcha that silently kills carve-outs), see the robots.txt guide. robots.txt governs whether Applebot may fetch; llms.txt is the separate, curated map AI assistants read once allowed in.
Vendor documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
The Apple family
Apple operates 2 distinct tokens in this roster, and they do not block each other: a robots.txt line for Applebot does nothing to its siblings — each needs its own User-agent: entry (the robots.txt guide has combined patterns).
| Token | Role | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| Applebot-Extended | Training | honors robots.txt |
Frequently asked questions
What is Applebot?
Applebot is Apple's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Does Applebot respect robots.txt?
Yes — Apple documents robots.txt compliance for Applebot (vendor docs reviewed July 2026).
How do I block Applebot?
Add 'User-agent: Applebot' followed by 'Disallow: /' to your robots.txt. Use the exact token — substring variants of other tokens will not match.
How do I verify Applebot traffic by IP?
Fetch Apple's published IP list for Applebot and confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a Applebot user-agent from any other IP is a spoofer.
Related bots
Same vendor, then other ai search crawlers — the full directory profiles all 34.