How to disable the on screen keyboard in 17.10 [duplicate]

Everytime I touch the screen, even in a non text entry area, this keyboard pops out. How can I disable it? It is very jarring

This is a known bug. Please mark yourself affected here.

It's been a problem since 2015: see on redhat, on GNOME bugzilla, and now on gitlab.

Florian made some patches in 2017, but I don't know how to apply them. Hence my as-of-yet unanswered question.

In the meantime, this guy made a GNOME extension to kill Caribou

To switch off the keyboard

1. Click the "Universal Access" icon in the top-right action bar.
2. Click the "Screen Keyboard" to "Off"
3. The "Universal Access" icon will disappear if no other options are "on". See below if you want to switch the keyboard on and off more easily and quickly!

To switch keyboard on when the Universal Access Bar is unavailable

1. Go to Settings -> Universal Access
2. Set "Screen keyboard" switch to "On"

To force the the Universal Access bar to always be available

1. Go to Settings -> Universal Access
2. Set "Always show Universal Access Menu" switch to "On"

It's unfortunate that there's no "Only when no other keyboard is available" option yet. Hopefully that will come soon. The Gnome version is far more tablet-friendly than Unity. :-)