Applebot-Extended: opt out of Apple AI training
Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that controls whether Apple uses Applebot’s crawl to train its AI models. Applebot keeps crawling.
Updated
Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that lets you opt out of Apple using your content to train its foundation models, which power generative AI features across Apple products. Apple says Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages: crawling is done by Applebot, and Applebot-Extended only decides how that crawled data may be used.
| Owner | Apple |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Training opt-out token |
| robots.txt token | Applebot-Extended |
| Follows robots.txt | It is a robots.txt token |
| Published IP ranges | search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json |
| If you block it | Content isn’t used to train Apple’s foundation models. Applebot still crawls for search. |
Requests come from Applebot. Apple publishes these example Applebot user-agent strings (desktop, then mobile):
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)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)What do Applebot and Applebot-Extended each control?
- Applebot crawls the web for Apple’s search features, such as Spotlight, Siri and Safari. Apple says its data may also be used to help train Apple’s foundation models, unless you opt out with Applebot-Extended.
- Applebot-Extended sends no requests. Disallowing it tells Apple not to use your content to train its generative models. Apple says rules for it are not considered in ranking for Search.
How do I opt out of Apple AI training?
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /Apple also notes that even if you disallow Applebot-Extended and use the nosnippet meta tag, your robots rules may still allow Applebot to crawl your pages, which is expected: crawling for search continues.
How do I block Applebot completely?
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /How do I verify Applebot?
Apple says Applebot traffic is generally identified by reverse DNS in the *.applebot.apple.com domain. Confirm with a forward lookup, or match the IP against Apple’s published list at search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json.
Should you block Applebot-Extended?
Like Google-Extended, it is a training-only switch that doesn’t remove you from Apple’s search features, so opting out has little visibility cost. Allow it if you want Apple’s models to know your content. Check your setup with the AI crawler checker.
Sources
Common questions
Does blocking Applebot-Extended remove me from Siri and Spotlight?
No. Apple says Applebot-Extended is only used to determine how to use the data crawled by Applebot, and that rules for Applebot-Extended are not considered in ranking for Search. Applebot keeps crawling for Siri, Spotlight and Safari features.
Does Applebot follow Crawl-delay?
No. Apple's documentation says Applebot does not follow crawl-delay.
What if my robots.txt has rules for Googlebot but not Applebot?
Apple says that if robots instructions don't mention Applebot but do mention Googlebot, Applebot follows the Googlebot instructions.