Apple App Site Association

Neutral Block: Depends Verified robots.txt: No

The Apple App Site Association is used to support "Universal Links" that can open in native iOS apps. The bot requests a specific path for a given hostname, which returns metadata that associates certain URL patterns with native iOS apps.

Key facts

Operator: Apple
Family: Apple
Purpose: Unknown
User-Agent: AASA-Bot
Should you block it?: Depends
Verified: Yes
Respects robots.txt: No
Identity type: Unknown
Confidence: Medium
Last verified: 2026-04-01
Last checked: 2026-04-01

Bot details

Identity

User-Agent: AASA-Bot
robots.txt token: AASA-Bot
HTTP user-agent: AASA-Bot/1.0.0
Aliases: AASA-Bot/

Ownership

Operator: Apple
Family: Apple
Type: Unknown
Purpose: Unknown

Verification and trust

Source type: Unknown
Confidence: Medium
Last verified: 2026-04-01
Last checked: 2026-04-01
Verification: Validate the identifying user-agent or signature against the operator documentation before creating hard allow rules.
Operator URL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html
Source URL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html
Spoofing risk: User-agent strings can be spoofed. For allow-listing or low-friction rules, pair the published identifier with operator documentation or cryptographic verification when available.

Blocking and detection

Robots

User-agent: AASA-Bot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

(http.user_agent contains "AASA-Bot")

Advanced server rules

Apache

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} AASA\-Bot [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [F,L]

Nginx

if ($http_user_agent ~* "AASA-Bot") { return 403; }

Notes

The bot requests a specific path for a given hostname, which returns metadata that associates certain URL patterns with native iOS apps.

Known user-agent patterns: AASA-Bot/ Known user-agent strings: AASA-Bot/1.0.0 Robots.txt handling in the directory: no.

Operator documentation: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html

Evidence and source

Validate the identifying user-agent or signature against the operator documentation before creating hard allow rules.
The Apple App Site Association is used to support "Universal Links" that can open in native iOS apps. The bot requests a specific path for a given hostname, which returns metadata that associates certain URL patterns with native iOS apps.
User-agent strings can be spoofed. For allow-listing or low-friction rules, pair the published identifier with operator documentation or cryptographic verification when available.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html