- Run by
- Apple
- Type
- Link preview bot
- Visits
- When a person does something that needs your page
- robots.txt
- Not documented
- Documentation
- Apple's page
What Apple Messages link preview does
When a link is shared in Messages and other Apple apps, the page is fetched to read its Open Graph metadata and show a preview with a title, image or video. Apple's technote on rich previews doesn't mention robots.txt.
- Previews don't run JavaScript or follow meta refresh redirects; server redirects are followed. Source
- The page is limited to 1 MB, and its icons, images and videos to 10 MB in total. Source
- Apple asks sites to serve the same metadata to every user agent. Source
Does Apple Messages link preview follow robots.txt?
Apple doesn't say whether Apple Messages link preview follows robots.txt.
How to stop Apple Messages link preview
Apple documents no robots.txt name for previews. Without reachable metadata, Messages shows a plain bubble with the page title, domain and icon.
What blocking Apple Messages link preview changes
Messages falls back to a plain bubble without an image.
Where to see Apple Messages link preview visits
Most bots never appear in Google Analytics. Many don't run JavaScript, so the analytics tag never loads, and Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders. Your server or CDN logs record every request with its user agent, so search them for the bot's name.
OneLence recognizes Apple Messages link preview and keeps it out of your visitor counts. With Premium, bot traffic shows which bots visit your site, how often and what kind they are.
Other bots from Apple
- Applebot: Powers search in Siri, Spotlight and Safari. What it crawls may also train Apple's models.
- Applebot-Extended: Not a crawler: the robots.txt setting that opts your pages out of training Apple's models.
Frequently asked questions
What is Apple Messages link preview?
When a link is shared in Messages and other Apple apps, the page is fetched to read its Open Graph metadata and show a preview with a title, image or video. Apple's technote on rich previews doesn't mention robots.txt.
How do I block Apple Messages link preview?
Apple documents no robots.txt name for previews. Without reachable metadata, Messages shows a plain bubble with the page title, domain and icon.
What happens if I block Apple Messages link preview?
Messages falls back to a plain bubble without an image.
Why doesn't Apple Messages link preview show up in Google Analytics?
Most bots never appear in Google Analytics. Many don't run JavaScript, so the analytics tag never loads, and Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders. Your server or CDN logs record every request with its user agent, so search them for the bot's name.