Applebot

Safe Block: Depends Verified robots.txt: Yes

Apple web crawler used for search features across Spotlight, Siri, Safari, and related Apple experiences.

Applebot data is used to power various features, such as the search technology that is integrated into many user experiences in Appleʼs ecosystem including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari.

Key facts

Operator: Apple
Family: Apple
Purpose: General Crawl
User-Agent: Applebot
Should you block it?: Depends
Verified: Yes
Respects robots.txt: Yes
Identity type: Official Documented
Confidence: High
Last verified: 2026-04-01
Last checked: 2026-04-01

Bot details

Identity

User-Agent: Applebot
robots.txt token: Applebot
HTTP user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Device; OS_version) AppleWebKit/WebKit_version (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/Safari_version [Mobile/Mobile_version] Safari/WebKit_version (Applebot/Applebot_version; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)
Aliases: Apple search crawler

Ownership

Operator: Apple
Family: Apple
Type: Search
Purpose: General Crawl

Verification and trust

Source type: Official
Confidence: High
Last verified: 2026-04-01
Last checked: 2026-04-01
Verification: Verify reverse DNS in the applebot.apple.com domain or match IPs against Apple's Applebot CIDR JSON.
IP ranges: https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
Operator URL: https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
Source URL: https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
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: Applebot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

(http.user_agent contains "Applebot")

Advanced server rules

Apache

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

Nginx

if ($http_user_agent ~* "Applebot") { return 403; }

Notes

Applebot is Apple’s general search crawler. Apple says the data it crawls powers search features and may also be used to help train foundation models unless you disallow Applebot-Extended.

Apple documents reverse-DNS verification and a JSON list of Applebot IP CIDRs.

Evidence and source

Verify reverse DNS in the applebot.apple.com domain or match IPs against Apple's Applebot CIDR JSON.
Applebot data is used to power various features, such as the search technology that is integrated into many user experiences in Appleʼs ecosystem including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari.
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://support.apple.com/en-us/119829

Key facts

Bot details

Identity

Ownership

Verification and trust

Blocking and detection

Robots

Cloudflare

Apache

Nginx

Notes

Evidence and source

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