What is Shortwave Image Fetcher?
Shortwave Image Fetcher is a privacy-focused service that proxies images from HTML emails through Shortwave's servers to protect users' IP addresses and maintain email privacy when viewing content in their AI-powered email client. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Shortwave |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | No |
| Insights Last Updated | July 31, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
Shortwave Image Fetcher shows up within seconds of someone sharing one of your URLs, grabs the title, description, and preview image, and leaves. Expect one hit per share, no link following, and volume that tracks how much your content circulates. A widely shared link can mean thousands of fetches in an hour.
Shortwave Image Fetcher's User Agent
| User Agent | Shortwave Image Fetcher |
How To Block Shortwave Image Fetcher With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to request that Shortwave Image Fetcher not access your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to request the same of all fetchers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Shortwave Image Fetcher # https://knownagents.com/agents/shortwave-image-fetcher
Disallow: /Global Insights for Shortwave Image Fetcher
As of July 31, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block Shortwave Image Fetcher in their robots.txt files.
Overall Fetcher Traffic
4.0% of all web traffic came from fetchers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Shortwave Image Fetcher?
No. Shortwave Image Fetcher builds the link preview that appears when someone shares your page in a chat or social feed. Blocking it turns those shares into bare links with no title or image, which fewer people click. Its traffic normally follows sharing activity rather than a crawl schedule, so if it ever starts crawling at volume, rate limit it instead of blocking it. Almost none of the top websites we track have robots.txt rules for Shortwave Image Fetcher right now.
Does Shortwave Image Fetcher Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. Shortwave Image Fetcher is not expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule only states your preference. Enforce the block with firewall or server rules, then confirm in Agent Analytics that its requests actually stop.
Does Shortwave Image Fetcher Access Private Content?
It cannot. Shortwave Image Fetcher loads only the exact URL someone shared, reads the title, description, and preview image, and leaves. It has no credentials and does not follow links to other pages.
Why Is Shortwave Image Fetcher Visiting My Website?
Someone shared a link to your page. Shortwave Image Fetcher fetched it once to build the preview card, and every new share can trigger another fetch, so spikes mean your content is spreading.
How Can I Tell if Shortwave Image Fetcher Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Shortwave Image Fetcher visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "Shortwave Image Fetcher". Look for hits on single pages moments after someone shares a link, with no crawling afterward. Keep in mind that Shortwave Image Fetcher doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.