Applebot user agent string
Crawls for search features in Spotlight, Siri and Safari. If robots.txt has no Applebot rules but has Googlebot rules, Applebot follows the Googlebot rules. Below is the exact string it sends, what each part means, and how to allow or block it.
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)
At a glance
| Type | Search engine crawler |
| Operator | Apple |
| Purpose | Search for Spotlight, Siri and Safari |
| Version | 0.1 |
| robots.txt token | Applebot |
| How to verify | Reverse DNS in *.applebot.apple.com, or the IP is within Apple's applebot.json ranges. |
Allow or block it in robots.txt
Block Applebot from the whole site
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /Allow it again
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /String breakdown
| Fragment | Meaning |
|---|---|
Mozilla/5.0 | Historical compatibility token. Nearly every browser claims "Mozilla/5.0" so that old servers do not serve it broken pages. |
Macintosh | Mac computer. |
Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7 | macOS 10.15.7. Newer systems freeze this at 10.15.7, and Apple Silicon Macs still report "Intel". |
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 | Frozen WebKit token: Safari has reported 605.1.15 for years, and browsers that copy Safari's format send the same value, whatever the real engine version. |
KHTML, like Gecko | Compatibility note: the engine descends from KHTML and behaves like Gecko. Kept for legacy browser sniffers. |
Version/17.4 | The browser's real version: 17.4 (mainly used by Safari). |
Safari/605.1.15 | Safari/WebKit build 605.1.15 — a compatibility token, not the Safari version. Chromium browsers send it too. |
Applebot/0.1 | Applebot 0.1 — an automated crawler/bot, not a real browser. |
+http://www.apple.com/go/applebot | Info page the bot operator publishes for webmasters. |
Use it in code
curl
curl -A "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)" https://example.comPython (requests)
import requests
requests.get("https://example.com", headers={"User-Agent": "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)"})Playwright (Node.js)
const context = await browser.newContext({ userAgent: "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)" });Source: About Applebot · checked September 2026