DIsable Properties Panel

Just to clarify this:

Both the Shape Tools and the Type Tool have an auto open panels button. You have to turn off the switch once for each of those tools and then it will stay disabled until you reset your preferences.

A single location or turning this option off/on in preferences would be beneficial.

One workaround that's working for me in the meantime until this issue is fixed:

• Grab the hamburger menu in the upper right of your Properties Panel and pull it away so it undocks (queueWorkArea script hamburger menu is red-boxed for reference in my screenshot since I've already "fixed" my Properties Panel).
• Now, if you have any extra space in the lower right of your interface (or anywhere for that matter), you can drag the Properties Panel almost completely off your screen and out of your way (red arrow in my screenshot points to the upper left corner of my off-screen Properties Panel)
• Save Changes To Workspace to lock in your changes

If you made/saved these changes to your default workspace, AE will now start up automatically with the offending Properties Panel effectively out of your hair.

This is a very, very annoying feature. I can't work fluently anymore because the Properties Panel keeps opening up although having "switched off" to open automatically. Moreover in my case, after double-clicking a text-layer, the panel opens and something keeps After Effects busy and I can't distinguish what the problem is. Keeps me waiting and can't continue to work. Also in another case where there are a lot of paths in a form layer, this feature seems to crash. 

Please Adobe, at least stop this feature from reopening automatically.

Having more than one nebulous vector to try and tackle this After Effects work-interference issue reminds me of the backflips you had to do to get your Cintiq (or other Wacom tablet) working in Windows 10 after Microsoft rolled out Surface and started fooling around with shoving pen crap everywhere throughout your desktop OS. The Adobe bungle is admittedly nowhere near as egregious, but it's still a very similar brand of aggravation.

It may have been around 2014 (or even eariler?) that some helpful soul posted the steps below somewhere on the web and saved a lot of Windows10/Wacom-using artists a whole lot of misery. I downloaded it and kept it on local storage in order to never, ever lose this lifeline, so unfortunately I'm unable to give credit to the angel who helped us all. Reposting here for yuks because it:

1. was so carthartic at the time (while being of immeasurable help!).
2. is funny to me today, now that I'm not currently completely screwed by my OS/drivers with nowhere to turn while desperately trying to figure out how to get back to work churning out 100 storyboard panels a day.

I hope the original poster realizes how many people they helped at the time. I'll always be grateful.

Note:

Back in the day, a "pencil" wasn't a 30-years-late-in-the-game Apple-developed variation of the stylus long-familiar to career digital artists of all stripes: it was a core of graphite wrapped in a wood sheath. When you dragged the exposed graphite tip across a sheet of paper, the graphite ablated and rubbed off onto the paper's surface, making visible marks, and people used pencils for writing and drawing.

This worked for me. Yay!

The Properties Panel should NOT behave different than any other panel in the software, that's basic UI/UX design that Adobe developers need to learn. The option to "Auto open" should not exist. The user should decide if they want it open or not. Another unecessary thing to justify Adobe's subscription model.

I am not seeing this button to turn it off, holy smokes can I please get rid of this panel forever. I am utterly annoyed with yet another update that I will never use. My current solution is to drag it to a display I don't use and ignore it as best I can.

I do not see the problem in AE Beta or AE 23.4. Select Properties, press Ctrl/Cmnd + w to close, double click a footage or solid layer, and the layer panel is selected; double click a text layer, and all the text is selected; double click a shape layer, and the layer is selected.