Hi Jay,
Unfortunately, there is no setting available to disable popups for cover images.
For images in the post content however, you can disable it in the composer.
If you really want to disable popups for cover images in post entries, you can try adding the custom css codes below:
div#fd.eb .eb-entry-body a.eb-post-image.eb-image-popup-button{
pointer-events: none !important;
}
JoomlaFolder/templates/yourCurrentTemplate/html/com_easyblog/styles/custom.css
Create directory and file if it does not exist.