Applebot-Extended: robots.txt token, what it controls, and why it never appears in logs
Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt control token, not a crawler. It has no user-agent. It controls whether content Applebot already collected may be used to train Apple foundation models.
Applebot-Extended has no user agent and will never appear in your logs. It is a robots.txt token only. It controls how content that a different, already permitted crawler collected may be used.
If a log line, analytics report or bot-detection tool claims a visit from Applebot-Extended, that record is wrong. Either the request is spoofed, or the tool is inventing a user agent that does not exist. Most published crawler directories get this wrong.
Specification
| Operator | Apple |
|---|---|
| Purpose | TrainingCollects content that may be used to train future models. Blocking it removes your content from future training runs. It does not affect whether a model can find and cite you today. |
| Agent kind | Control tokenA robots.txt token only. It has no user-agent and will never appear in your logs. It controls how content already collected by another crawler may be used. If this string shows up in your access log, treat it as spoofed. |
| User agent | None. This entry is a robots.txt token and has no user agent. |
| robots.txt token | Applebot-Extended |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | No published method, user agent is the only signal |
| Sends referral traffic | No |
| Attaches a citation | No |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | training |
| Source | Operator documentationhttps://support.apple.com/en-us/119829 |
| Verified on |
What blocking it costs you
Disallowing Applebot-Extended opts you out of Apple Intelligence training while keeping Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions inclusion intact. It cannot be detected in logs, so any log-analysis tool listing it as a detectable user agent is wrong.
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address Applebot-Extended only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Applebot-Extended Allow: /
Block Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Applebot-Extended Disallow: /
Questions
Does Applebot-Extended appear in my server logs?
No. Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token only. It has no user agent, so it never appears in an access log. A log line naming Applebot-Extended is spoofed or comes from a misconfigured client.
Does Applebot-Extended respect robots.txt?
Documented: respects robots.txt
What does blocking Applebot-Extended cost me?
Disallowing Applebot-Extended opts you out of Apple Intelligence training while keeping Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions inclusion intact. It cannot be detected in logs, so any log-analysis tool listing it as a detectable user agent is wrong.
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 a spoofed request claiming this token is flagged rather than counted. 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.