What is Applebot's user-agent string?

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot) (vendor-documented at support.apple.com (Applebot page); browser versions rotate within this format, and a mobile variant exists)

Applebot

Q: What is Applebot?

Applebot is Apple's search-index crawler — it crawls proactively to build the search index the assistant cites in answers. Allowing it is how your pages become citable.

Apple · Search-index crawler · Updated 2026-07-19

Applebot is Apple’s search-index crawler — it crawls proactively to build the search index the assistant cites in answers. Allowing it is how your pages become citable.

User-agent string

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)

Source: vendor-documented at support.apple.com (Applebot page); browser versions rotate within this format, and a mobile variant exists.

Does Applebot respect robots.txt?

Respects robots.txt rules targeted at Applebot. Apple’s notable quirk: if robots.txt does not mention Applebot but mentions Googlebot, Applebot follows the Googlebot instructions. It does not support crawl-delay.

Allow or block Applebot

# Allow (recommended if you want Applebot traffic)
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /

# Block
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /

Verifying it’s really Applebot

Reverse-and-forward DNS in *.applebot.apple.com, or match the published CIDRs at search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json. User-agent strings can be spoofed by anyone — identity claims are only trustworthy when the source IP matches the operator’s published ranges.

Fetch the published ranges and check a suspect IP against them:

curl -s https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json

What site owners should know

Powers Spotlight, Siri, and Safari search. Apple states crawled data “may also be used to help train Apple foundation models” — that training use is controlled by the separate robots-only Applebot-Extended token, not by blocking Applebot itself.

Scan your site to see how your robots.txt, content negotiation, and discovery files treat AI agents — including whether you’re blocking agents you meant to allow. Background: the robots.txt guide, how AI agents browse, and agent readiness.

All AI agent user-agents

ClaudeBot · Claude-User · Claude-SearchBot · GPTBot · OAI-SearchBot · ChatGPT-User · PerplexityBot · Perplexity-User · Google-Extended · Google-Agent · Google-CloudVertexBot · Meta-ExternalAgent · Meta-ExternalFetcher · MistralAI-User · Applebot · Applebot-Extended · Amazonbot · bingbot · DuckAssistBot · CCBot · Bytespider