01 · Operator
Who operates Applebot
- Company
- Apple
- Official docs
- support.apple.com
02 · Behavior
What Applebot does
Applebot crawls pages automatically for Apple's search technology. Apple states the data may also be used to train Apple foundation models unless the site disallows Applebot-Extended. Applebot may render pages in a browser, so blocking JavaScript or CSS can hurt indexing.
03 · Impact
Why Applebot matters for your site
If you allow it
- Needed to appear in Apple search features such as Spotlight, Siri and Safari
- AI training use can be controlled separately via Applebot-Extended
If you block it
- Only if you do not want to appear in Apple search features
- Does not support Crawl-delay to limit load
04 · Allow
How to allow Applebot
robots.txt
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Applebot")
Action: Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules
# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.WordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Applebot") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Applebot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block Applebot
Applebot follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.
robots.txt
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Applebot")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Applebot") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Applebot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for Applebot
The user agent published by the operator:
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)07 · Verification
Is it really Applebot?
Anyone can copy a user agent. Real Applebot requests come from the IP ranges published at search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to applebot.apple.com, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.
FAQ
Questions about Applebot
Does Applebot follow Googlebot rules in robots.txt?
Yes. If robots.txt does not mention Applebot but does mention Googlebot, Applebot follows the Googlebot instructions.
How do I verify Applebot?
Do a reverse DNS lookup and check the hostname is in the applebot.apple.com domain, or match the IP against Apple's published applebot.json list.
Does blocking Applebot stop Apple AI training?
Yes, but it also removes you from Apple search features; to opt out of training only, disallow Applebot-Extended instead.
Last reviewed Oct 6, 2026