prevent bottom concoles (tool windows)(services [alt- 8], debug [alt-5], run[alt-4]) from opening split pane

Hi, for starters forgive me - As a longtime terminal + vim user, I am new to IDEs and Jet Brains.  As such my naming convention for things may not follow conventions. I have been looking for a solution to this and cannot find it.

I am running IntelliJIdea2021.2 and recently, perhaps after an update, I noticed that when I toggle between my `bottom consoles` (sorry idk what they are called in IDEA land) that IDEA will open them as split planes.

example: I have services open [alt-8] and then i want to check the run console so i hit [alt-4] and rather than run opening up on the bottom instead of closing services and opening run, it opens run as a split pane between services and run. 

I should note that this is a new behavior and my ide used to not do this and I am looking for a way to prevent this.  Although it is a nice feature to have sometimes, it is frustrating because I want to be able to read my stack traces etc however when it opens split by default I have to use another keystroke to close the offending console still open in order to read what is being printed.