# Applebot

> Powers search in Spotlight, Siri and Safari. Apple says crawled data may also help train its foundation models and supply context for AI answers.

Canonical page: https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots/applebot · Facts checked against Apple docs on 2026-10-20

| Operator | Used for | Type | Obeys robots.txt |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Apple | Siri, Spotlight and Safari search | AI search index | Yes |

## Should you allow it?

Allow it. To opt out of Apple model training only, disallow Applebot-Extended instead.

**If you block it:** Your content can't be crawled for Spotlight, Siri and Safari search results.

The user agent is Apple's desktop example. Apple says the browser version it advertises changes over time, so match on the Applebot token.

If your robots.txt has no Applebot rules but has Googlebot rules, Applebot follows the Googlebot rules.

Applebot ignores Crawl-delay.

To keep a page out of AI answer context while staying in search, Apple says to use the nosnippet meta tag. It also accepts the X-Robots-Tag header, for example X-Robots-Tag: applebot: nosnippet.

Apple says pages marked with schema.org isAccessibleForFree: false can still appear in search, but Applebot won't use that content as context for AI answers.

## robots.txt rules

Allow Applebot:

```
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /
```

Block Applebot:

```
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /
```

Disallow Applebot from one folder only:

```
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /
```

A bot follows the most specific User-agent group that names it and ignores the generic `User-agent: *` group, so repeat any shared Disallow lines inside it.

## Same company, different bots: Apple

| Bot | Type | Purpose | Obeys robots.txt | If you block it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Applebot](https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots/applebot.md) | AI search index | Siri, Spotlight and Safari search | Yes | Your content can't be crawled for Spotlight, Siri and Safari search results. |
| [Applebot-Extended](https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots/applebot-extended.md) | Control token (does not crawl) | Apple model training | Token only | Apple won't use Applebot-crawled content to train its generative models. Siri, Spotlight and Safari search are unaffected. |

## User agent string

```
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)
```

## How to verify it's really Applebot

Find its requests in your server logs:

```
grep -i "Applebot" access.log
```

Reverse DNS check (Apple documents this): the hostname of the IP must end in `applebot.apple.com`, and a forward lookup of that hostname must return the same IP.

Published IP list: https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json

## Common mistakes

- Blocking JavaScript or CSS files. Apple says Applebot may render pages and rendering can fail when those resources are blocked.
- Forgetting that Googlebot rules apply. With no Applebot group, a Disallow you wrote for Googlebot also applies to Applebot.
- Writing a User-agent: Applebot group and expecting your User-agent: * rules to still apply. A crawler follows only the most specific group that matches it and ignores the others, so repeat any shared Disallow lines inside the Applebot group.
- Leaving a CDN or host "block AI bots" setting on and only checking robots.txt. Those settings block requests at the network edge. Cloudflare, for example, changed its defaults on September 15, 2026 for customers who did not opt out: bots it classifies as Training or Agent are blocked on pages that display ads, and multi-purpose crawlers that combine Search and Training are affected by the Training block.
- Trusting the user agent header alone. Anyone can send "Applebot" in a request; verify the source IP as shown above before allowlisting or blocking.

## FAQ

### What is Applebot?

Powers search in Spotlight, Siri and Safari. Apple says crawled data may also help train its foundation models and supply context for AI answers.

### Does Applebot respect robots.txt?

Yes, according to Apple.

### What happens if I block Applebot?

Your content can't be crawled for Spotlight, Siri and Safari search results.

### Should I block Applebot?

Allow it. To opt out of Apple model training only, disallow Applebot-Extended instead.

## Sources

- [Official documentation from Apple](https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829)
- [Published IP addresses for Applebot](https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json)

Check whether Applebot can reach a site: https://getrankroot.com/tools/ai-crawler-checker or `GET https://getrankroot.com/api/bots?url=example.com`. Full list: https://getrankroot.com/ai-bots.md