Yes! Thank you for reporting this as it annoys me as well.

I tried a workaround to display two digital clocks next to each other, but because you can't disable the time (only the date), this does not work.

Same here. Modifying DigitalClock.qml to remove the hardcoded "|" separator caused the spacing between date and time to be too wide and equally as unconfigurable. My panel separates date/time with a comma (",") which is easily achieved by setting the "Date format" custom field.

For now, I've copied the old file from plasma-workspace-6.2.5-1 package:  /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.digitalclock/contents/ui/DigitalClock.qml

*** Bug 500018 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 178336 [details]
Separator not needed

One extra issue I noticed while trying to get rid of the divider is that sometimes it shows even when there's no need for it. You can see in the attachment that the separator is displayed to the left of the clock, even though there's no date displayed.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Add a digital clock applet to the bar
2. Mark the Show Date checkbox, then select `Always beside time` on the dropdown on the right
3. Click apply. You should see the date, the separator and the time just as expected.
4. Now, uncheck the `Show Date` checkbox.
5. Click apply. You will see the separator character on the left side of the time.

Comment on attachment 178336 [details]
Separator not needed

My apologies, I uploaded the wrong image and I don't have permissions to delete it.

Created attachment 178337 [details]
Separator not needed

> You can see in the attachment that the separator is displayed to the left of the clock, even though there's no date displayed.

This is a separate issue, and is being tracked in bug 499945. I've submitted a fix for this already. To get rid of it in the meantime, select any mode other than "Always beside time" in the Digital Clock settings.

Please either remove this again or add an option  to disable this. I've never seen such a weird separation of date and time before and it is very annoying to read.

>  Its setting for custom spacing is omitted here to follow the principle:
>  "good design choices by default over unnecessary configuration." The
>  option could be introduced in the future if highly requested by users.
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/commit/27755ed3004363cfb6df9b8b92921fa6406fb5a8

The digital clock settings has a grand total of seven options. This reads more like someone's personal preference and laziness to bother creating a setting for it and it shows. Since the original change has the bar remain even when the date isn't displayed it seems this commit did not spend enough time testing it's basic functionality.

Next time consider adding a setting to the initial commit when you decide that your personal taste should trump everyone else's.

> Since the original change has the bar remain even when the date isn't displayed

This is indeed a bug, and it's been fixed for Plasma 6.3.1.

We might also be able to disable it when you're using a custom date format, since in this case it'll be expected that you handle things like that yourself.

If that's not good enough, we can consider making it optional.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #10)
> we can consider making it optional.

Has there been any conclusion on this matter Nate? I'm about to touch everything right next to this, if you wanted it added, I'd be happy to take care of it while I'm in the neighbourhood.

Yeah I think it's fair to make it optional in some form. My thinking was to expose it by making it a text character that the user can override or set to nothing.

Excellent, thanks. There's another issue, regarding vertical clocks 440096, and when I quickly fixed that, I found that it really needed a separator - and doesn't have one, the 'offending' separator that was added here is only in the horizontal version. Making it optional as per this bug, lets me do that bug, too.

I would also like an option to toggle the separator, or, if that's too much work, have the original commit reverted. To me, this is a very bizarre default to force on users.

Git commit b71ccfc79e3441c1ea7e077f77fa23b2b130f81d by Nate Graham, on behalf of Owen Ross.
Committed on 17/06/2025 at 14:33.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'.

applets/digitalclock: Remove hardcoded vertical pipe between date and time

This change was unnecessary; you can already  manually add it via the
`|` character in the custom date option, if you really want this.
Related: bug 437170

M  +5    -25   applets/digital-clock/package/contents/ui/DigitalClock.qml

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/commit/b71ccfc79e3441c1ea7e077f77fa23b2b130f81d

When a separator is added by custom date format and there are other time zones, users will get something like this on popup:
UTC: 17:25:18 (11-01 Sat |)
Because the separator is treated as a part of date.

I prefer the date and time to be separated by a line, but the separator couldn't be put in custom date format. We need a separate option for the separator.

I don't see that happening, sorry.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #17)
> I don't see that happening, sorry.

Set Date format to Custom, "MM-dd ddd |"
Add another time zone, for example, UTC
Move the mouse cursor over the widget, and the popup shows:

Sunday, November 2, 2025
UTC: 19:42:23 (11-01 Sat |)
...

(In reply to xjlvpo6hn from comment #18)
> (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #17)
> > I don't see that happening, sorry.
> 
> Set Date format to Custom, "MM-dd ddd |"
> Add another time zone, for example, UTC
> Move the mouse cursor over the widget, and the popup shows:
> 
> Sunday, November 2, 2025
> UTC: 19:42:23 (11-01 Sat |)
> ...

The custom date format is reused after different time zone, not just for display

I've had the separator show up with the time zone display as well, though I can't reproduce it now on 6.5.1, and it was somewhat inconsistent before. I think might only show up when the time zones are on different dates, as otherwise it does not seem to show the date (and so not the date format) for time zones.