Applebot: user agent, purpose, and whether to allow it
Applebot indexes content for Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions.
Specification
| Operator | Apple |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Search indexBuilds the index an AI product cites from. Blocking it removes you from that product's answers. This is the expensive block, and the one most often made by accident. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Not documented by Apple. Kymo matches this agent on the token Applebot, observed in real logs rather than published in operator documentation. |
| robots.txt token | Applebot |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | Reverse DNS, forward confirmed.applebot.apple.com |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes |
| Attaches a citation | Yes |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | indexing |
| Source | Operator documentationhttps://support.apple.com/en-us/119829 |
| Verified on |
What blocking it costs you
Blocking Applebot removes you from Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions. Matching note: the token Applebot is a substring of Applebot-Extended, so a naive substring match will produce false positives. Match longest token first.
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address Applebot only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow Applebot
User-agent: Applebot Allow: /
Block Applebot
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
Questions
What is the Applebot user agent?
Apple documents the robots.txt token Applebot but does not publish a full user-agent string for it. Kymo records this agent from observation rather than from documentation.
Does Applebot respect robots.txt?
Documented: respects robots.txt
What does blocking Applebot cost me?
Blocking Applebot removes you from Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions. Matching note: the token Applebot is a substring of Applebot-Extended, so a naive substring match will produce false positives. Match longest token first.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
Kymo classifies every crawler hit server-side using this registry, so Applebot shows up under Apple with its purpose attached. Read how crawler detection works, or run a free free AI visibility check to see what each crawler currently gets back from your server. No account needed for the check.