Applebot-Extended: user agent, IP verification and robots.txt
Applebot-Extended is operated by Apple. It is classified here as Control token (Control token, not a crawler). Verification method: None available.
Exact user-agent string
Apple states Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages. It is a robots.txt control that governs how data already crawled by Applebot may be used.
robots.txt token: Applebot-Extended. The user-agent string is self-asserted and can be
forged by anyone. It is a claim, not proof.
How to verify Applebot-Extended is genuine
Apple publishes no IP range file and no reverse DNS method for Applebot-Extended. There is no way for anyone, including us, to prove a request claiming this identity is genuine.
How to block or allow Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /Replace Disallow with Allow to permit it explicitly.
What blocking Applebot-Extended costs you
Disallowing Applebot-Extended opts your content out of training Apple's general purpose foundation models, including the ones behind Apple Intelligence. Apple is explicit that pages disallowing it can still appear in search results, so the visibility cost is nil. This is close to a free opt-out.
What is specific to Applebot-Extended
Applebot-Extended does not crawl, so it will never show up in your logs and cannot be verified or spoofed. Apple describes it as determining how data crawled by the Applebot user agent may be used, which means it operates entirely after the fetch. The practical consequence is that disallowing it does not reduce your crawl traffic by a single request. It also does not cover everything: Apple documents that even with Applebot-Extended disallowed and nosnippet applied, content remains discoverable through Spotlight, Siri and Safari.
Verify a request claiming to be Applebot-Extended
Check a Applebot-Extended request against Apple's published ranges
Source
Primary documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829. Last verified 2026-08-02.
Other Apple crawlers
- Applebot - Search index