Base environment doesn't deactivate

Hello. Have just successfully installed Anaconda Navigator on my Mac mini running macOS Monterey (v. 12.6.7). Everything looks good, but when I open a Termina window, I see that the base environment is activated. And when I shut down Anaconda Navigator (after using Jupyter Lab), it is not deactivated. What am I missing? Did I shut down improperly?
In the meantime, I have run

conda config --set auto_activate_base false

and now the base env is not activated when I launch Anaconda Navigator.
How should I address the env situation? I am thinking about creating a new env for my actual project. What are best practices here? Thanks.