Applebot
Apple's crawler for Siri and Spotlight. One of the few AI-relevant crawlers that fully renders JavaScript.
Reference reviewed by Sona
| Operator | Apple |
|---|---|
| Powers | Siri and Spotlight suggestions, Apple Intelligence retrieval |
| Purpose | Search & answers |
| User-agent token | Applebot |
| Respects robots.txt | Yes |
Applebot is Apple's web crawler. It feeds Siri and Spotlight Suggestions and provides the retrieval layer Apple Intelligence draws on when it surfaces web content. It predates the current AI-crawler wave by years, which is why its documentation and verification story are more mature than most entries here.
Its standout technical property is rendering. Apple documents that Applebot executes JavaScript and supports modern web standards - putting it in a very small group alongside Googlebot. Most AI crawlers see only your server-rendered HTML, so a client-rendered site can be fully visible to Applebot and Googlebot while being effectively blank to GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and CCBot.
Applebot respects robots.txt. Whether the content it collects may also train Apple's generative models is governed separately by Applebot-Extended, so the useful split is available: allow Applebot to stay in Siri and Spotlight, disallow Applebot-Extended to stay out of training.
Verification here is unusually solid. Apple documents reverse DNS under applebot.apple.com and also publishes a JSON file of Applebot IP CIDRs, so you can check either way - and legitimate hostnames follow a recognizable dashed-IP pattern such as 17-58-101-179.applebot.apple.com.
How Applebot behaves
- Executes JavaScript and supports modern web standards - rare among AI-relevant crawlers, and shared mainly with Googlebot.
- Long-established crawler, so it often appears in logs well before the newer AI bots.
- Reverse DNS hostnames use a dashed-IP form under applebot.apple.com; Apple also publishes IP CIDRs as JSON.
- Training use is governed by the separate Applebot-Extended token, not by this one.
Full 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)
Allow Applebot
Your pages stay eligible for Siri, Spotlight, and Apple Intelligence surfaces across a large device base - and it is one of the few crawlers that will see your JavaScript-rendered content.
User-agent: Applebot Allow: /
Block Applebot
You want out of Apple's ecosystem entirely - but note this removes you from Siri and Spotlight, and Applebot-Extended is the token for training alone.
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
How to verify Applebot
Reverse DNS + published IP ranges
Apple supports both mechanisms. Reverse DNS on genuine traffic resolves under applebot.apple.com, with hostnames following a dashed-IP form like 17-58-101-179.applebot.apple.com - run the lookup twice, confirming that a forward query on the hostname returns the original address. Apple also publishes a JSON file of Applebot IP CIDRs if you would rather match against a list than perform DNS round-trips. Apple's 17.0.0.0/8 allocation makes obviously-wrong claims easy to spot.
Documented reverse-DNS suffixes: .applebot.apple.com
Commonly confused with Applebot
Applebot does the crawling and controls Siri and Spotlight visibility. Applebot-Extended sends no traffic and only governs training use.
The other crawler in this directory that reliably renders JavaScript. If a page is visible to these two but not to AI training crawlers, client-side rendering is usually the reason.
Applebot FAQs
Does Applebot render JavaScript?
Yes. Apple documents that Applebot executes JavaScript and supports modern web standards. That makes it one of very few AI-relevant crawlers - Googlebot being the other - that can see content which only exists after client-side rendering.
How do I verify Applebot traffic?
Reverse DNS should resolve under applebot.apple.com, in a dashed-IP form such as 17-58-101-179.applebot.apple.com, and a forward lookup on that hostname should return the original IP. Apple also publishes a JSON file of Applebot IP CIDRs.
Should I block Applebot to avoid Apple Intelligence training?
No - use Applebot-Extended for that. Blocking Applebot removes you from Siri and Spotlight Suggestions as well, which is a much larger cost than the training opt-out you were aiming for.
Is Applebot new?
No, it long predates the current wave of AI crawlers, originally serving Siri and Spotlight. Its AI relevance grew with Apple Intelligence, and the Applebot-Extended training token was added in June 2024.
Can Applebot read your page right now?
Test any URL and see exactly what AI crawlers receive.