Applebot
Operated by Apple · Powers Siri, Spotlight & Safari
Applebot crawls the web to power search technology across Apple's ecosystem, including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari. Apple states data crawled by Applebot may also help train Apple's generative AI foundation models — a use publishers can separately control via Applebot-Extended. Applebot crawled content may also provide up-to-date context for AI-generated answers in Apple products.
What it does
The data crawled by Applebot powers the search technology integrated into many Apple experiences, including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari. Enabling Applebot in robots.txt allows website content to appear in these products for Apple users.
Apple states data crawled by Applebot may also help train Apple foundation models powering generative AI features, including Apple Intelligence. Whether that use is allowed is controlled separately, by the Applebot-Extended token. Pages marked isAccessibleForFree: false may remain discoverable but are not used as additional AI-answer context.
Why we recommend keeping it open
- Needed for content to be crawled for Spotlight, Siri, and Safari Suggestions
- Apple Intelligence training use is controlled separately via Applebot-Extended, so blocking Applebot is not required just to opt out of that
- Apple's documentation is explicit that these controls don't override one another
- The nosnippet directive prevents marked content from being used as additional context in Apple's AI-generated answers
Identification & robots.txt
Applebot
Verify using Applebot reverse DNS or Apple's published IP ranges.
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /