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Applebot user agent

Operated by Apple · AI search index · Finding you

robots.txt token
Applebot
Full User-Agent string
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_5) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.1.1 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)

Applebot identifies itself with the token Applebot. That is the case-insensitive substring to grep for in access logs, and the exact name to put after User-agent: in robots.txt. It builds the index an AI search product answers from.

Allow or block Applebot in robots.txt

Robots.txt applies the most specific matching group, so a group naming Applebot overrides your User-agent: * rules for this bot alone.

Allow
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /
Block
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /

What blocking costs you: Spotlight, Safari suggestions, and Siri search results can't include your pages.

To see which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows right now, run your domain through the AI crawler access checker. To check whether AI answers actually cite you, use the AI citation checker.

Apple's other crawlers

Blocking one Apple bot does not block the others — each token is a separate group.

Apple's own documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829

FAQ

What is the Applebot user agent?
Applebot announces itself with the User-Agent token "Applebot". That token is the case-insensitive substring to match in server logs and the exact name to put after "User-agent:" in robots.txt. The full line Apple publishes is: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_5) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.1.1 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)
Who operates Applebot and what does it collect?
Applebot is run by Apple and builds the index an AI search product answers from. In the AI picture that puts it under "Finding you": Building the AI index that decides who gets cited.
How do I block Applebot?
Add a robots.txt group naming the token exactly: User-agent: Applebot followed by Disallow: /. Robots.txt matches the most specific group, so a Applebot group overrides whatever your User-agent: * group says. Spotlight, Safari suggestions, and Siri search results can't include your pages.
Should I block Applebot?
That depends on what you lose. Spotlight, Safari suggestions, and Siri search results can't include your pages. Sites chasing AI citations usually keep the live-answer and AI-search bots open and make a separate decision about the training crawlers. Run your domain through the AI crawler access checker to see which ones your robots.txt lets in today.
Can Applebot be spoofed?
Yes. A User-Agent header is self-reported, so any scraper can claim to be Applebot. The token is fine for reporting and for robots.txt, but if you are rate-limiting or firewalling on it, verify the request IP against Apple's published ranges before you trust the name.

Paste a full User-Agent line and identify any crawler with the AI bot user agent list and lookup, or see every token side by side.