I have found this <https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430036> bug report which seems related. After reading that I was able to at least remove the main toolbar permanently by deleting the entry <ToolBar name="mainToolBar"> <text>Main Toolbar</text> <index>0</index> <Action name="new-tab"/> <Action name="split-view-left-right"/> <Action name="split-view-top-bottom"/> </ToolBar> in my ~/.local/share/kxmlgui5/konsole/konsoleui.rc file. However, the session toolbar doesn't seem to be mentioned in that file.