Overview
Apple Podcasts is a feed fetcher from Apple used for RSS or Atom feed polling, syndication refresh, subscription delivery, and content update checks.
Its primary user-agent pattern is iTMS; related patterns include apple-podcasts; Apple Podcasts.
Apple Podcasts is Unverified at the identity-evidence level. The listed identity remains useful for detection, but this record does not currently contain authoritative evidence sufficient to authenticate the identity claim.
Apple Podcasts is marked as respecting robots.txt directives for crawler access control.
Apple Podcasts should be reviewed against site policy, source evidence, crawl rate, and requested paths before a permanent allow or block rule is created.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
iTMS - Aliases
- apple-podcasts; Apple Podcasts
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
iTMS - Robots Token
- iTMS
- Identity Type
- Observed
- Evidence Method
- Treat `iTMS` as an identity signal only. Confirm it with current operator documentation, cryptographic verification, forward-confirmed reverse DNS, source-network ownership, or other authoritative evidence before trusting the claimed identity.
Classification
- Type
- Feed
- Kind
- Fetcher
- Family
- Apple
- Purpose
- Feed fetch
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Apple Podcasts is used for RSS or Atom feed polling, syndication refresh, subscription delivery, and content update checks.
- Detection Notes
- Apple Podcasts traffic is primarily detected by the `iTMS` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `apple-podcasts; Apple Podcasts`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Apple infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- Apple Podcasts has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
User-agent: iTMS Disallow: /
Relationships
- Operator
- Apple Checked 2026-08-07
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.