Applebot-Extended: what it is and how to allow or block it
A robots.txt setting for Apple’s AI training. It never visits your site and doesn’t affect Siri or Spotlight search.
Last checked 2026-10-08
- Company
- Apple
- Used for
- Apple Intelligence model training
- Job
- Control setting, not a crawler
- Follows robots.txt
- Not a crawler
- Name in robots.txt
- Applebot-Extended
What Applebot-Extended does
Apple says plainly: “Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages.” Pages are collected by Apple’s normal crawler, Applebot, which powers search features in Spotlight, Siri and Safari.
Applebot-Extended only decides whether pages Applebot already collected may be used to train Apple’s foundation models, the ones behind Apple Intelligence and other generative features.
Should you allow it?
A choice about Apple’s AI training only. It has no search downside either way.
What blocking it changes: Your pages should not be used to train Apple’s foundation models. Your appearance in Siri, Spotlight and Safari search suggestions is unaffected.
Using Applebot-Extended in robots.txt
Use the token in robots.txt like any other name. Apple says disallowing it does not remove pages from search results and is not considered in search ranking.
To allow it
User-agent: Applebot-Extended Allow: /
To block it
User-agent: Applebot-Extended Disallow: /
robots.txt lets every bot in by default, so you only need the allow lines if another rule in your file would otherwise block it. Our robots.txt guide explains how rules for different bots combine.
Is there anything to verify?
Nothing to verify for the token itself. Real Applebot visits reverse-resolve to an applebot.apple.com hostname, and Apple publishes Applebot’s IP ranges.
Source: Apple’s Applebot documentation, checked 2026-10-08. Bots and their rules change often, so check the company’s own page before making a decision that matters.
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