Applebot-Extended: what it is, and how to allow or block it in robots.txt

Key point. Applebot-Extended is Apple's robots.txt control token for AI training. It governs use of your content for model training. It is itself a robots.txt rule and never visits your site.

Applebot-Extended at a glance

These are the facts our registry holds for Applebot-Extended, checked against Apple's documentation on October 14, 2026.

VendorApple
PurposeAI training
TypeControl token
Follows robots.txtNot applicable: a control token never visits
Vendor documentationApple crawler page, checked October 14, 2026
Published IP rangesNone listed in our registry

What is Applebot-Extended?

Applebot-Extended is Apple's robots.txt control token for AI training. It governs use of your content for model training. Our registry notes: A control token: Apple documents it as governing use of Applebot-crawled data for training, not as a separate crawler.

In Apple's own words (Apple's crawler documentation, read October 14, 2026):

  • “Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages. Webpages that disallow Applebot-Extended can still be included in search results.”

Apple uses other names for other jobs: Applebot (web search). Each takes its own robots.txt group.

Does Applebot-Extended follow robots.txt?

Applebot-Extended is itself a robots.txt rule rather than a visitor: it has no crawler of its own, and Apple reads the group that names it to decide how it may use pages its crawler fetched.

A robots.txt rule records your request. It does not prove a crawler honours it, and firewall or CDN bot settings can refuse a crawler that robots.txt allows, so check those too.

How do I block Applebot-Extended in robots.txt?

Add a group that names Applebot-Extended and disallows the whole site:

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /

To keep it out of one folder only, disallow that path instead, for example Disallow: /private/.

Because Applebot-Extended is a control token, this rule does not stop any crawl; it tells Apple how it may use the pages its crawler fetches.

How do I allow Applebot-Extended?

Applebot-Extended is allowed by default: if no group names it and no User-agent: * rule blocks it, it may read every page. A crawler obeys the most specific group that names it and falls back to User-agent: * only when no group names it (RFC 9309), so if a catch-all rule blocks crawlers, add a group for it:

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /

How can I tell if a request really comes from Applebot-Extended?

You cannot see it in your logs, because it never visits. Apple says: “Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages.” The crawling itself is done by Applebot.

How often do startup websites block Applebot-Extended?

Our AI Crawler Access Report read the robots.txt files of 600 sampled startup websites on October 7, 2026. This is its row for Applebot-Extended, across the 569 sites whose answer it could read:

CrawlerTypeBlocked on at least one pathBlocked on all six pathsNamed in the file
Applebot-ExtendedAI training5 of 569 sites (0.9%; 95% interval 0.4% to 2.0%)3 of 569 sites (0.5%; 95% interval 0.2% to 1.5%)62 of 569 sites (11%; 95% interval 8.6% to 14%)

“Blocked” means the file disallows the crawler on at least one of six common paths (/, /pricing, /blog/, /docs/, /about, /product).

The report's headline figure, for the three AI search crawlers it tracked: “3 of 569 startup websites (0.5%; 95% interval 0.2% to 1.5%) block at least one AI search crawler (Elementera AI Crawler Access Report, October 2026).”

The figures describe that sample of Y Combinator-backed software companies on the day we fetched it. The method, the intervals and the full table are in the AI Crawler Access Report.

What the AI Crawler Access Report adds about Applebot-Extended:

One parsing detail affects Apple's names. Our checker, like many parsers, lets a group written for Applebot also govern Applebot-Extended when no group names Applebot-Extended directly. In our sample that rule decided the Applebot-Extended result on 5 of 569 sites.

How do I check whether my robots.txt blocks Applebot-Extended?

Read the group by hand: our free crawler checker covers 13 crawlers, and Applebot-Extended is not one of them yet.

  1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt.
  2. Look for a User-agent: Applebot-Extended line. If there is one, only that group applies to Applebot-Extended.
  3. If there is none, the User-agent: * group applies.
  4. Within the group, the longest matching Allow or Disallow rule for a path wins.

Where can I see every AI crawler?

Our list of AI crawlers shows all 26 names in our registry, filtered by purpose. The same data is a free JSON download in our AI crawler registry.

Frequently asked questions

Three questions site owners ask about this name, each answered in one paragraph.

Should I block Applebot-Extended?

That is a choice about model training, not about search. Apple says: “Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages. Webpages that disallow Applebot-Extended can still be included in search results.”

Does blocking Applebot-Extended affect other crawlers?

No. Applebot-Extended is a control name, not a crawler, so the rule changes how Apple may use pages; Apple's crawlers each follow the group that names them.

How do I see whether Applebot-Extended visits my site?

You will not see it in your logs. Apple documents it as a control name that does not crawl pages.

Work with us

There are two ways to work with us. Teams that want the work done for them can use our managed AEO services: Book a call. Teams that want to see where they stand first can start with Lenz, our free analysis of how ChatGPT and Gemini answer their buyers' questions: Get your free AI visibility report.

How this page was made

A script builds this page from our AI crawler registry, the vendor crawler pages we read on October 14, 2026, and, for the blocking figures, the AI Crawler Access Report. Every sentence in quotation marks was checked against the vendor's page that day. Soroush Mehri reviewed the page, and Mojtaba Ebadi approved it for publication.

Sources