How to modify html title separator in Sphinx doc generator

By default it seems to what to use a long dash '--' as the separator between page title and overall site html_title that's set in the config.py file.

We'd like to change this to a '|' character instead.

I can add a block to the layout.html template to modify the title I'm just unsure of what to actually write for that. I want it to be 'page_title | html_title' in the title tags across the site.

Solution

The em dash (—) comes from the layout.html template:

{%- if not embedded and docstitle %}
{%- set titlesuffix = " &#8212; "|safe + docstitle|e %}
{%- else %}
{%- set titlesuffix = "" %}
{%- endif %}

The value of titlesuffix is used a bit further down in the template:

{%- block htmltitle %}
<title>{{ title|striptags|e }}{{ titlesuffix }}</title>
{%- endblock %}

To customize:

Ensure that you have templates_path = ['_templates'] in conf.py.
Create a file called layout.html in the _templates directory.

In layout.html, add the following:

{% extends "!layout.html" %}

{%- set customtitlesuffix = " | "|safe + docstitle|e %}

{%- block htmltitle %}
<title>{{ title|striptags|e }}{{ customtitlesuffix }}</title>
{%- endblock %}